Seedstars has named the 15 ventures joining the third cohort of SEED Inclusivity, its accelerator for startups building products and services for people with disabilities across Asia Pacific.
Supported by Visa Foundation, the six-month programme brings together companies linked to India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. The cohort covers a wide range of needs: sign-language communication, speech therapy, developmental support for children, mobility, rehabilitation, learning tools and access to care.
The third cohort also marks a visible Southeast Asian tilt. India remains strongly represented, but ventures from Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam point to a wider regional push in a market where disability inclusion is often discussed in policy terms yet remains underserved by scalable, affordable technology.
Over the next six months, founders will receive coaching, take part in expert-led sessions and attend two in-person bootcamps in Vietnam. The structure follows Seedstars’ broader emerging-market playbook: help early-stage companies sharpen their business models, connect them with mentors and investors, and prove that impact-led ventures can also be commercially viable.
Disability inclusion moves from charity to market-building
Asia Pacific’s disability community is large, diverse and poorly served. Access to diagnosis, therapy, assistive devices and inclusive education remains uneven, particularly outside major cities. Families often face long waiting lists, high private-care costs and a shortage of trained specialists. For people with hearing loss, mobility impairments or developmental needs, the gap is not just medical. It affects schooling, work, communication and independence.
That is where this cohort sits. The selected ventures are not tackling disability inclusion through a single lens. Some are building assistive hardware, others are using artificial intelligence for screening and communication, and several focus on therapy delivery, rehabilitation and home-based care.
In Southeast Asia, these gaps are especially pressing. Public health systems in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are expanding, but access to specialist disability services remains inconsistent. Families often rely on a patchwork of hospitals, schools, therapists, non-profits and informal support networks. Startups that can lower the cost of therapy, extend care beyond clinics or make communication easier could play a meaningful role, provided they can prove quality, trust and affordability.
The Southeast Asian cohort
Among the Southeast Asian startups selected is Indonesia’s Hear Me, which is developing technology for Indonesian Sign Language translation and interpretation. The need is clear: sign-language access remains limited in many public and private settings, from classrooms and workplaces to healthcare facilities. Technology can help bridge that gap, but local language and cultural context matter. A generic sign-language solution does not automatically work across countries, let alone across Southeast Asia’s linguistic diversity.
Also from Indonesia, Birru focuses on speech therapy and language-learning support at home and in school. This reflects a broader trend in paediatric care: parents and teachers need tools that extend support beyond occasional clinical sessions. Where trained therapists are scarce or concentrated in urban centres, blended models that combine professional input with at-home reinforcement may become increasingly important.
The Philippines is represented by Mylo Speech Buddy, which supports speech therapy and at-home practice for children with speech delays. Its inclusion underlines a pain point familiar to many families in the region: early intervention can make a major difference, but regular therapy is often out of reach because of cost, distance and availability.
Vietnam’s Ba Bánh Nam Hà brings a different angle, building adapted three-wheel vehicles and wheelchair attachments. Mobility remains one of the most practical barriers to participation in education, work and community life. In dense cities and rural provinces alike, transport systems are rarely designed around wheelchair users. Locally adapted vehicles can be more relevant than imported devices if they are built for the roads, budgets and daily routines of their users.
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Singapore features through GenElek Technologies, an India- and Singapore-linked venture developing robotic exoskeletons for rehabilitation and personal mobility. It sits at the advanced hardware end of the sector, where engineering, clinical validation and cost control must come together. For Southeast Asia, the question is whether such technologies can move beyond specialist institutions and reach wider rehabilitation settings over time.
A broad Asia Pacific mix
The rest of the cohort includes ConnectHear from Pakistan, which provides AI-powered sign-language communication and accessibility services; FyndHealth from India, which offers developmental assessments and multidisciplinary therapy for children; and Gabify, also from India, which builds AI screening and practice-management tools for developmental care.
Several Indian ventures focus on children’s developmental and learning needs. HireForCare provides assessment and therapy for children with developmental needs, Kidaura Innovations builds digital tools for therapy delivery and home reinforcement, and Giftolexia uses AI for early screening and learning support to help identify learning difficulties sooner.
Others target mobility, rehabilitation and neurological care. Lifespark Technologies develops wearable devices and digital care for neurological conditions. BeAble Health builds game-based rehabilitation devices and software for movement recovery. Ksham Innovation is developing bone-conduction smart glasses for people with hearing loss, while Thinklude offers AI-powered live captioning and Indian Sign Language interpretation.
Taken together, the cohort shows how disability-focused innovation is spreading across product categories. It is no longer confined to assistive devices. Increasingly, ventures are combining hardware, software, AI, telecare and data tools to make services more accessible and continuous.
Building on earlier cohorts
According to programme reporting, the 15 ventures in Cohort 1 have reached 2.97 million people and raised US$12.8 million since completing the programme. Cohort 2 brought together 17 ventures from India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Singapore, and concluded in April 2026 with a Demo Day in Jakarta.
Those figures matter because disability inclusion startups often face a difficult funding environment. Investors may see the market as fragmented, heavily regulated or too dependent on public-sector and non-profit buyers. Founders must prove both impact and commercial viability, while navigating sensitive issues such as clinical outcomes, accessibility standards and user trust.
The jury for the third cohort included Bernard Chiira, founder and CEO of Assistive Technologies for Disability Trust and General Partner at Momentous Fund; Katharine Lindquist, Programme Officer at Visa Foundation; Brianna Losoya-Evora, Head of Impact Measurement and Management at Sweef Capital and Director of The Sweef Institute; Pierre-Alain Masson, CEO and co-founder of Seedstars; and Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo, Global Disability Advisor at the World Bank Group.
Also Read: What this digital shift means for people with disabilities in SEA
For Southeast Asia, the more interesting question is what happens after the accelerator. The region does not lack pilots, hackathons or inclusion pledges. What it needs are solutions that can survive procurement cycles, win the confidence of families and clinicians, and reach people outside elite urban settings.
That is the test facing this cohort. If even a handful can scale across borders while staying affordable and locally relevant, SEED Inclusivity could become more than an accelerator. It could help define a new generation of disability-focused businesses in Asia-Pacific, built not around charity but around access, dignity and everyday use.
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