Back in December we announced that Singaporean Accelerator JFDI had opened applications for their first bootcamp of 2013. The organization has just announced the lucky eight teams who will be spending 100 days, from February 21st, bringing their fledgling businesses from idea to investment. Each of the teams has already been awarded S$25k to get started and is now in with a 60% chance (based on last year’s results) of winning S$600k at the demo day after the bootcamp.

Unlike most of the boot camps you here about, the teams won’t be doing much exercise and their diet is likely to be anything but ideal as they wash down pizza with cups of coffee, but the arduous hours of strategy, planning and execution, and lack of sleep may well trim a few pounds off. And the results could be much more rewarding than a slightly less protruding belly.

The teams in it to win it in this round are listed below.

1. AskAbt, (India). A platform to manage real-time crowdsourced queries
2. Collabspot, (France & Philippines). A novel approach to Customer Relationship Management
3. DayTripR, (Singapore & New Zealand). An online data collection utility
4. DocTree, (Singapore & India). software for medical practice management
5. Duable Chinese (讀able), (USA). Fun and effective Chinese language learning
6. Fashfix, (Singapore & Malaysia). ‘Turns wardrobes into blog shops’
7. My Fitness Wallet, (Singapore). Health and wellness.
8. Referoll, (Singapore & Vietnam). Recruits participants for research studies

There are three main aims during the bootcamp that the teams must strive towards, in order to convince investors their business ideas are feasible. Their solution must:

1. Focus on a real-world problem that is worth solving
2. Must show that its solution fits that problem
3. Be financially viable (IE demonstrable sales strategy)

The challenge is less about brilliant ideas than it is about focused execution. Only one thing is certain: it will not be a straight run and, and along the way, many teams will need to make painful ‘pivots’ as they respond to feedback from users.

A total of 262 teams applied for a place on the program and for those who were unsuccessful they received detailed feedback and an offer of support to fix the perceived issues that would to hold back their chances. Those who feel ready to re-apply for the next round (dates to be announced) are encouraged to do so.