Rikkeisoft and VUIHOC were selected in Endeavor Global network in ISP Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Endeavor held our 98th in-person International Selection Panel (ISP) from March 25-27, 2024 in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. After three days of interviews and deliberations, Endeavor selected 20 entrepreneurs leading 10 companies. The organization now supports 2,575 entrepreneurs from 1,578 companies in 42 markets around the world.

Each ISP is the culmination of a rigorous, multi-step selection process to identify high-impact entrepreneurs from all over the world. We seek founders with the greatest growth potential, as well as those who commit to reinvesting time and resources into their local entrepreneurial ecosystems to help build the next generation of entrepreneurs, sparking a Multiplier Effect. During the ISP, panelists interview entrepreneurs about their businesses and evaluate their potential for high-impact growth. The panelists then discuss the candidates and vote on whether to select them to become Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

Panelists

Endeavor would like to thank our panelists:

Joanna Rees, West (Endeavor Global Board Member); Fırat İşbecer, Commencis (Endeavor Entrepreneur, Endeavor Turkey Board Member); Raoul Oberman, Sasya Terra Pte Ltd (Endeavor Indonesia Board Member); Edward Tirtanata, Kopi Kenangan (Endeavor Entrepreneur); Tiger Fang, Kargo (Endeavor Entrepreneur); Anderson Thees, Redpoint eventures (Endeavor Global Ambassador); Nicolas Aguzin, HKEX (Endeavor Global Ambassador); Roshini Bakshi, Everstone Capital Advisors (Endeavor Global Ambassador); Christopher Schroeder, Next Billion Ventures; Fady Abdel-Nour, Antler; Ganesh Rengaswamy, Quona; Noah Breslow, Bain Capital Partners; Oliver Rippel, Asia Partners; Randy Reddig, Fastly; Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures; Vinnie Lauria, Golden Gate Ventures.

Additionally, we want to extend an extra special thank you to the two panelists who graciously hosted us as Endeavor Vietnam board members:

Giang Pham, Genetica (Endeavor Vietnam Board Member); Vu Lam, Katalon (Endeavor Entrepreneur, Endeavor Vietnam Board Member)

Our New Entrepreneurs

Rikkeisoft

Entrepreneurs: Tung Ta, Dzung Phan, and Hoa Dang
Industry: B2B Software
Endeavor Office: Vietnam

Rikkeisoft provides businesses with the option to outsource their IT engineering needs globally.

Founded in 2012, Rikkeisoft offers IT engineering outsourcing services to businesses around the world, with prices three times lower than the European average and about 50% lower than those in China. With 1,800 employees including 1,000 engineers, the company offers a broad range of IT services and expertise in digital solutions. The company has serviced over 500 enterprise clients including AB Bernstein, Panasonic, SoftBank, Fujisoft, NCR, and Daifuku, and completed 1,000+ successful projects through its offices in Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, and the US. Rikkeisoft is committed to talent development and already has over 20 employee spinoffs.

Tung Ta, Dzung Phan, and Hoa Dang met each other while pursuing their bachelor’s in computer science at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology. They completed their bachelor’s degrees at Japanese universities, Ritsumeikan University and Keio University, with the name Rikkeisoft being derived from a blend of their alma maters’ names. After graduating, the trio spent about a year working at FPT Software, Vietnam’s largest legacy IT outsourcing company. Here they learned the ins and outs of the IT outsourcing industry and created the idea for Rikkeisoft. Today, Tung leads business development, sales, and recruitment; Dzung is in charge of technology and product development; and Hoa handles the day-to-day operations across the organization.

 

VUIHOC

Entrepreneurs: Lam Do
Industry: Education
Endeavor Office: Vietnam

VUIHOC is an online education platform providing interactive classes for kindergarten to 12th-grade students.

Founded in 2019, VUIHOC is solving for the lack of accessible after-school K-12 education programs in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in Vietnam. The platform offers a library of over 500,000 learning resources, including video, livestream, and one-on-one tutoring that align with the national curriculum. VUIHOC now employs 100 well-known teachers and 800+ tutors and has amassed over 1.1 million users.

Lam, VUIHOC’s co-founder, grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, and later attended the National Technical University of Ukraine’s Kyiv Polytechnic Institute​ to study automation engineering technology. After graduation, Lam gained extensive experience in various roles in business development and education before becoming the Business Director of KIMSEN Industrial Corporation. The idea for VUIHOC was born during Lam’s tenure at KIMSEN while he was working to develop a technology system to manage an afterschool center in Hanoi and seeing first-hand the challenges that students in rural areas faced to travel long distances just for tutoring.

Coverflex

Entrepreneurs: Miguel Santo Amaro, Nuno Pinto, Rui Carvalho, Luis Rocha, and Tiago Fernandes
Industry: B2B Software
Endeavor Office: Portugal

Coverflex is an employee benefits management platform that enables companies and employees to manage and customize compensation end-to-end.

Founded in 2019, Coverflex integrates all aspects of employee compensation – from salary and benefits to insurance, meal allowances, and discounts – into one product. By combining software and payments, employees can manage their spending while simplifying complexity for employers. Coverflex also offers the option of a per-employee Coverflex Visa card with a flexible allowance function. Coverflex currently serves over five thousand companies including Revolut, Santander, PwC, Zendesk, and Getir, and 100,000+ employees.

The Coverflex founders, Miguel, Nuno, Rui, Luis, and Tiago, are well-established within the Portuguese startup ecosystem. Miguel founded two prior ventures, Uniplaces and StudentFinance, which are still operating today. Nuno co-founded three prior ventures in the e-commerce and insurance spaces. Rui has over 15 years of experience in operations and finance, spending the initial seven years of his career at EY and KPMG, and later serving as the VP of Operations at Unbabel and the Head of Ops Iberia for CIRC. Luis has a 15+ year career in sales and marketing and is a Founder LP at Shilling VC. Tiago has a 20-year career in technology and co-founded and served as the CTO of his technology consulting firm.

Dronamics

Entrepreneurs: Svilen Rangelov and Konstantin Rangelov
Industry: Aerospace
Endeavor Office: Bulgaria

Dronamics is the world’s first cargo drone airline.

Founded in 2014, Dronamics is a leading developer and operator of large, long-range drones built specifically for cargo, its flagship Black Swan is able to carry 350 kg (770 lb) at a distance of up to 2,500 km (1,550 mi) up to 80% faster, 50% cheaper and with up to 60% lower emissions than alternative modes of transport, including airfreight. This proven technology enables same-day shipping over very long distances for a variety of industries: from pharma to food, from e-commerce to spare parts. Founded in 2014 by the Rangelov brothers, an economist and an aerospace engineer, and backed by two sovereign wealth funds, Dronamics is Europe’s first licensed cargo drone airline and its partners include global transportation and logistics leaders like Aramex, DHL, Hellmann, Qatar Airways and many others.

Svilen, an economist, and Konstantin, an aerospace engineer, are two brothers from Bulgaria who co-founded Dronamics. The idea came about while Konstantin was studying aerospace engineering in the Netherlands and wanted an easy way to get Bulgarian cheese to the Netherlands. From there the two brothers brainstormed how to transport objects across continents in the most efficient way possible and set out to create Dronamics.

Janio

Entrepreneur: Junkai Ng
Industry: Logistics
Endeavor Office: Malaysia

Janio is one of South East Asia’s top fourth-party logistics (4PL) providers empowering retail brands and marketplaces worldwide with logistics expertise, advanced analytics, and automation.

Founded in 2018, Janio helps clients simplify their entire post-purchase operations from warehousing, freight forwarding, and fulfillment, to various value-added services through a single point of contact. Janio’s clients include marketplaces like Amazon and Lazada, retail brands like LVMH and Disney, and other logistics companies like FedEx and Lion Air. Overall, Janio serves over a thousand clients and ships over three million dollars worth of goods monthly.

Junkai is the co-founder and CEO of Janio Asia. He started his professional career in venture capital and private equity. During this time he held investment roles as one of two analysts at Gobi Partners, the sole analyst at Venturecraft (Singapore), and one of two analysts on Partners Group’s (Singapore) Private Equity Integrated team. Throughout this period, Junkai’s exposure to the entrepreneurial ecosystem sparked his interest in e-commerce and logistics. He set his mind on the issue of Southeast Asia’s fragmented logistics chain and began his entrepreneurial journey with Janio.

nybl

Entrepreneurs: Noor Alnahhas and Mohammed Shono
Industry: Enterprise Software and Services
Endeavor Office: Saudi Arabia

nybl is a deep-tech development company with a mission to develop and export technology and innovation from Saudi Arabia and UAE to the rest of the world.

Founded in 2019, nybl’s Machine Learning/AI platform focuses on delivering real-time failure prediction, prescription, prevention, and optimization for critical industries such as energy & sustainability, consumer goods, and humanitarian services.

nybl’s founders are experts in the fields of oil and gas, petrochemicals, and computer science. Noor is a serial entrepreneur who previously founded multiple companies in the oil & gas industry. After exiting his last company, he spent two years consulting in the energy field and thinking about ideas for his next company. During this period, he frequently had conversations with his longtime friend, Mohammed. At the time, Mohammed was working at the Project Management Office of Saudi Aramco’s IT Strategy and Technology Planning Department. Their shared vision of creating software in Saudi Arabia that could be exported globally led to the creation of nybl.

Paper.id

Entrepreneur: Yosia Sugialam
Industry: Fintech
Endeavor Office: Indonesia

Paper.id is Indonesia’s largest business-to-business digital payments platform.

Founded in 2016, Paper.id helps businesses on both ends of transactions, whether it be clients looking to bill their clients or pay suppliers. The company streamlines the B2B payments process by digitizing invoicing and payments, unlocking additional payment channels, automating the reconciliation process, and offering buyers a buy-now-pay-later solution for inventory purchases. Paper.id also has multiple ecosystem partnerships with the likes of Gojek, Visa, and JCB, to facilitate its integrations, payments, co-branded cards, and more. Paper.id serves over 48,000 businesses including J&T Cargo, Shipper, and Kopi Kenangan.

Yosia, Paper.id’s co-founder and CEO, is a serial entrepreneur who has been exposed to the world of B2B transactions through his family’s sugar business. After completing a bachelor’s degree in computer science from UCLA and an MBA from Loyola Marymount University, Yosia returned to Jakarta and joined PT Mitra Otomasi Sampoerna, developing tech solutions for large enterprises. He also founded drywebsite.com, a web development company. In 2016, while assisting his family’s business with collections from hotel clients, Yosia’s frustration with the manual process reached a tipping point. Motivated to streamline these processes, Yosia launched Paper.id in 2016.

Rewaa

Entrepreneurs: Mohammed Alqasir and Abdullah Aljadhai
Industry: B2B Software
Endeavor Office: Saudi Arabia

Rewaa is an all-in-one platform for small and medium-sized businesses to manage their omnichannel sales.

Founded in 2018, Rewaa’s platform consolidates core services for these businesses such as inventory management, order management, point-of-sale and invoicing, automated reports, financing, and app integrations. The business uses a partner-centric approach to create an all-in-one platform that, today, has processed over two billion dollars in transaction volume and enhanced the operational and cost efficiencies for more than seven thousand businesses across Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed and Abdullah, Rewaa’s co-founders, were introduced in 2018 by a mutual friend and saw an opportunity to help small businesses in Saudi Arabia scale up. Mohammed is a serial entrepreneur who launched his first venture in high school, SHR4, an online news forum that he sold to a global company in 2009. While attending Boise State University, he founded a second company and worked part-time as an embedded systems engineer. Abdullah joined McKinsey & Company as a consultant for a year following his graduation from King Saud University in 2015. He then returned to his alma mater as a faculty member in the finance department. In 2018, he obtained a master’s degree in investment management at Temple University and returned to Saudi Arabia where he became a financial advisor for a variety of startups.

SRTX

Entrepreneur: Katherine Homuth
Industry: Retail & Consumer Tech
Endeavor Office: Canada

SRTX is a materials and technology company disrupting the hosiery industry with its impossibly-strong pantyhose.

Launched in 2017, SRTX aimed to solve the problem of women’s tights’ susceptibility to rips and ladders. SRTX is best known for its first technology, Sheertex, a knit made from one of the world’s strongest polymers (used in bulletproof vests and climbing equipment), to prolong the lifespan of tights. Within two years of founding the company, Sheertex shipped its first pair of tights to customers as a direct-to-consumer hosiery label offering a 90-day rip-resistance guarantee. Since then, the company has sold millions of pairs of tights to consumers across the US.

Katherine is the founder and CEO of SRTX. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Business at York University in 2011, she briefly worked at ecobee as a Manager of Marketing Communications before starting her first business, ShopLocket, in 2011. There, she built an e-commerce pre-order platform for hardware entrepreneurs looking to bring new products to consumers. After ShopLocket was acquired by PCH International in 2014, Katherine remained there for two years as a Vice President leading the company’s Toronto office. During this time, she founded Female Funders, an online community for female angel investors, and aspiring angel investors to learn, network, and invest. In 2017, Katherine began developing the idea for SRTX.

Zig

Entrepreneurs: Nérope Bulgareli and David Pires
Industry: B2B Software
Endeavor Office: Brazil

Zig is a Brazilian software platform for managing nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and large events.

In 2022, Zig was established by the merger of two consumption and payment companies, ZigPay and NetPDV. Today, Zig enhances its offline point-of-sale offerings with end-to-end functionality, offering customers additional features such as booking software, cashless wristbands, and customer relationship management systems. In 2023 alone, the company served over 1,000 venues and more than 6,000 events and processed over $700 million in transactions. The company has 450 employees across Brazil, Mexico, Portugal, and Spain, and serves notable clients such as Bar Brahma, an iconic nightlife establishment in Brazil, and Tomorrowland, one of the largest music festivals in the world.

Nérope and David, Zig’s co-founders, both originate from Salvador, Brazil. Nérope began his career at Arthur Andersen & Co., where he spent five years as a manager. Later, he transitioned to Deloitte, where he built a career spanning almost two decades in risk management, governance, compliance, and internal controls consultancy. Nérope’s enthusiasm for the entertainment industry drove him to invest in and manage numerous establishments, including over 10 bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and event production companies in São Paulo. David began teaching himself programming at the age of 19, separate from his university studies. After completing his degree at Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), he founded Cubos, a prominent software house and venture studio where he oversaw the launch of eight different companies.