Introducing the Deemples Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Make an investment, starting from RM4,500

RM 1,318,219.25

Registered interest by 119 investors (Updated: 9 Sept 2020 @ 2:30PM)

Deemples today helps 25k golfers find games anytime and anywhere they want to across 5 countries. We’ve achieved small successes because of all your support since 2016, and want to welcome you to own a piece of Deemples.

Introducing the Deemples Equity Crowdfunding campaign, where you can make an investment in Deemples starting from a low as RM4500, so that when/if we succeed in the future, you’re rewarded too.

Deemples Equity Crowdfunding Campaign by pitchIN will officially launch on Wednesday 9 Sep 2020 at 3 PM. Register your investment interest today to get early access.

COMPANY DETAILS

SUMMARY
Deemples is a golf app that connects golfers for tee times. Golfers want  to golf, but can't golf if they can't find someone else to golf with. In  today's busy lifestyle, golfers find it harder and harder to get a game  going because their friends can't make it when they can play. As a  result, golf courses are recording lower rounds, putting the entire golf  industry at risk.

Deemples helps by allowing golfers to post games, and other golfers to  join in if they're available. Once they're in they can chat with others in  the game, and when they're done they can rate and score each other.  Golf clubs also now start accepting payments from golfers via  Deemples to secure bookings, and improve the golf registration  experience at the golf course. 

Currently with a team of 3, we've helped over 20k golfers play over 40k  rounds of golf, processed over 5000 transactions, and have seen  revenues grow 50% MoM since we started monetising 9 months ago.

 Golf courses now require assistance in fully digitising their tee time  booking process, removing the need for human interaction, improving  efficiencies and yield, and being able to convert revenue and accept  payments 24/7. This investment round will be used to improve their  technology stack, roll out onboarding activities, and ensure the golf  organising and booking experience will be seamless for both golfers  and golf courses. 

Malaysia makes up only 0.5% of the USD70B global golf industry. The  same problem persists for the other 60M golfers in the world. Our next  markets are AUNZ and North America that captures 57% of the global  golfing population.   

Aside from geo-expansion, once current product features/business  models are mature, Deemples will invest in new digital products, ie  Marketplace, Content, Advertising, Academies, and Golf Course  Management Systems, to add value to the golfers’ journey.

US media conglomerates like Comcast and Discovery have been  investing heavily into golf media companies:  
  • Comcast, owner of NBC Universal and Golf Channel, acquired  GolfNow, the largest tee time booking service in the world.  GolfNow recently acquired EZLinks, FORE! Reservations,  1 TeeOff.com, iSeekGolf, BRSGolf, and more to maintain  dominance in each market.  
  • Discovery recently acquired Golf Digest from Condé Nast for  USD35M, beefing up their GolfTV offering, which has exclusive  rights to the PGA Tour, European Tour, Ladies European Tour,  and the Masters. 
  • TopGolf, US-headquartered global golf entertainment outlet  chain, invested by Callaway Golf, reportedly filing a USD4B IPO  in 2020.  
The vision for Deemples is to help golfers find a game anytime,  anywhere in the world. 

Deemples is currently available in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei,  Philippines, Indonesia, and Melbourne. Download the Deemples app  from the App Store, Google Play, or Huawei AppGallery. Check out  Deemples on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and our blog.

PROBLEM
There are a 4 types of golfers:  
  1. The club members: Those that golf week in week out with the same  bunch, at the same golf club. This is routine for them, and if that group  stops golfing, the rest will just stop golfing along with them.  
  2. The variety seekers: Could be club members too, but golfers who  seek variety outside of their home club. No two golf courses are the  same, heck no two holes are the same. Golfers being golfers want to try  all of them, hence you see why golfers travel for golf, because there are  only 150 golf courses in Malaysia, compared to 30k of them around the  world.  
  3. The price conscious: Golfers that look for cheap deals, natural  human instinct.  
  4. The newbies: The largest and most important pool of golfers. All  golfers start here, but if they don’t find people to golf with together on a  consistent basis, they drop off and the golf industry loses yet another  player. Once they catch on, they become addicts, and the golf industry  stands to benefit from their consumption for years to come.  

Aside from type 1 - the club members, type 2-4 are golfers that use  Deemples the most. Because their schedules are not consistent, and it’s  not every week that everyone they want to golf with will be available.     In a world where private clubs only account for 30% of the golf courses,  and 70% and continuously increasing percentage are public golf  courses, we see the number of type 1 golfers - club members declining  across the board. More private golf clubs are also turning to become  public courses since club membership base alone usually cannot  financially sustain the operations of the club.  

Only 1% of the population golfs:

In a population of 7 billion people in the world, only 60 million people  play golf. That’s less than 1% of the world’s population. In Malaysia, the  numbers are the same, 300 thousand golfers in a 31 million population  country. 

In more developed countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, the  density of golfers go up to about 10%, and in developing countries  especially in Asia, Africa, and South America, the density is close to  0.1%.

Golf takes a long time for a game, compared with other games. A round  of 18 holes takes about 4.5 hours, then you add in the time taken to  travel there and back (usually at least 30 min away), eat, chit-chat and  shower after the game, easily an 8 hour activity. 

The people that play golf too, are normally people with higher income,  who are usually senior executives, business owners, and professionals.  These people usually have a packed schedule. So it is almost  impossible, for busy people, to be able to find another busy person, to  carve out 8 hours in their day at the same time.  

SOLUTION
A platform that connects golfers who are looking to golf 

Golfers want to be able to find other available golfers at all times, so a  platform was built to solve this purpose.  

By 2015, (5 years ago) there were platforms made for almost  everything. We could get a ride easily with Uber, get food delivered  easily with Foodpanda, find accommodation easily with AirBnb, find  dates easily with Tinder, but finding golfers who were available at the  same time that you were, was a nightmare. 

Before Deemples, golfers resorted to a few ways: 

  • 1-   Joining a golf club
  • 2-   Web forums 
  • 3-   Facebook groups 
  • 4-   Whatsapp individual friends 
  • 5-   Whatsapp group chats

Joining a golf club 

Was out of reach for most golfers. Some golf club memberships were  cheaper at about RM4000 per year, but some went up to RM200,000  one off. There’s also a monthly subscription fee of about RM100-500 to  keep your membership active.  

Aside from the financial aspect, golfers didn’t want to be tied to just 1  club, playing the same 18 holes every week. Except for type 1 golfers  (club members) above, the rest of the golfers want variety, and with  golf courses always having discounted rates, there was no reason to  get a golf membership.  

Joining a club also didn’t guarantee that you were able to find another  golfer who was available at the same time.  


Web Forums   

The good ol days of the internet pre-Facebook. Forums ruled as  discussion boards where everyone came together for a specific topic  on a website. In Malaysia there was a forum called mygolf.com.my that  a lot of us used to find someone else to golf with.

The need was there, the structure wasn’t. There were a lot of  limitations, but it was the best tech we had at that time. There was no  way to filter across countries, states, or even sort by chronological order  for game dates.


Facebook groups

Facebook groups replaced forums. However, if not moderated well, the  group would just be a bunch of people coming together sharing various  items, for example golf news, golf equipment, golf accessories, golf  deals, and of course golfers looking for players.

Because of unstructured content, things also get lost in the vast volume  of information. Golfers who were looking for games, could never find  other golfers who were also looking. 

You could join multiple Facebook groups, but that would just be  multiplying the amount of unstructured content.


WhatsApp

Whatsapp was a game changer for most of us. We didn’t have to try to  call a friend and made sure he picked up before we could  communicate. You could leave a message and they’ll respond when  they can! However, it’s also a pain when you’re only asking one person  at one go, and have to wait a long time for a response, before you ask  the next friend.


WhatsApp groups chats 

Which led us to Whatsapp groups. Instead of 1-to-1 communication,  communicating in groups was a lot more effective. Most groups would  be anywhere from 4-250 people. Which means 250 people were  getting a notification everytime someone replied to say if they could or  couldn’t go, amidst all the other banter going on in the chat. Again,  unstructured information which leads to loss of opportunity if a message  is missed, or unnecessarily bombarded by too many messages, when  you cannot play anyway.  

PRODUCT
Learning from successes and failures of others:

Learning from all the requirements golfers needed to find a game, and  the successes and failures of other similar consumer marketplace apps  either in golf (GolfMatch, MyCircle Golf, etc) or in other areas (ie  Uber/Facebook/Tinder/Instagram), we were very clear how we wanted  Deemples to be like.

We saw other similar apps like Deemples have news feeds where  golfers could post pictures and videos of their game/swing ie Facebook  style. We also saw some that included a friend list, where you could  save a golfer into a friend list to invite that golfer again

Whilst these features are nice to have, they were not core to helping  the golfer achieve their goal of finding someone to play with at the  same time that they can play.

If you wanted to share your picture at golf, or ask for comments on your  swing, you could do that on Facebook/Instagram where your friends  were already congregating.  

If you really liked a person you met on the golf course and wanted to  keep in touch, you would just get their phone number or add them on  Facebook. This doesn’t mean they’d ever be available again wherever  you wanted to golf.

So building newsfeeds, friend lists, and chatting features would take up  too much technology resources that wasn’t contributing to the main  objective. 

We learned more from the likes of Uber, where there wasn’t a list of  drivers that you could choose from (even if there was, the driver was  irrelevant if they were not available when you wanted a ride), or a  newsfeed to share your ride (you could however share your ride on  7 other social media platforms). We just wanted golfers to be able to find  other golfers who were most importantly AVAILABLE and looking for a  game at the same time, in the shortest amount of steps.  


Introducing Deemples: 

Deemples is an app that golfers use to post games stating when and  where they want to play. Then other golfers can browse upcoming  games in chronological order, and have the option of filtering by area,  golf course, and dates. 

  Once golfers join a game, they can chat with other golfers in the game,  view profiles of players in the game, including number of games played,  rating, and handicap. When they’re done with the game, golfers can  rate each other, and also submit scores for each other, so golfers can  maintain an objective and accurate golf handicap on Deemples. 

Deemples is currently available for golf courses in Malaysia, Singapore,  Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia, and Melbourne. 


Additional features: 

A few features were built to increase retention of the app. 

  • Golf handicap 

    A golf handicap provides an estimated playing ability of a golfer.   Since only a small fraction of the golfing population had a valid golf  handicap that’s verified, in most cases a golfer would basically just  “declare” what their handicap is without any basis.  

    Golfers playing via Deemples were all strangers, so allowing golfers to  just declare a handicap that could have been inaccurate wasn’t good  enough. Because we had the technology capabilities, and since users  were already rating each other after the game, we decided to allow  golfers to submit scores for each other. 

    3 values were required to calculate the handicap of each golfer:  Adjusted gross score, course rating, and slope rating.  

    These values submitted would then be used to calculate a golfers  handicap. Golfers weren’t allowed to submit their own scores, but  required a minimum of 2 other golfers in the game to submit identical  scores for them for it to show and count for handicapping purposes

  • Game results

    Taking it up a notch from handicaps, a few more values had to be  submitted so that a leaderboard of game results for each game could  be generated once scores were submitted. To do this, we requested for  golfers to submit hole by hole scores, in addition to the 3 previous  values, so that the sum of scores for each hole would give us the gross  score of the player. The net score then could be calculated by  subtracting the course handicap from the gross score, which could be  calculated by the course/slope rating that were submitted.    

    With this, golfers were able to see something like this: 

  • Monthly leaderboard:

    The game results got us thinking. Why do results by game, when we  can combine everyone who were playing across the month at various  golf courses into one larger leaderboard for a Deemples network-wide  competition!

    This has led to a monthly competition which is now the all new  Deemples Monthly Medal. Now it is possible for thousands of golfers to  compete at one go, whenever and wherever they want to play. 

    This is made fair with the course and slope rating of each golf course  which provides a different handicap for the same player at different golf  courses based on that course’ difficulty as per their course/slope rating

    We’re still in beta testing on this feature and have been running a  simple version of it on Deemples.com  Once  it’s fully rolled out on the Deemples app, it’ll look something like this: 

TRACTION

In the last 3 years, 22,000 golfers have experienced the app and  played over 40,000 rounds of golf. 

Whilst we’re available in 5 countries, 80% of the rounds happen in  Malaysia for now. 

A golf round is a golf industry metric calculating the number of players  playing at any given time. For example if you play 5 times a month = 5  rounds of golf. If 4 of us play together = 4 rounds of golf.  

CUSTOMERS

As a 2 sided marketplace, we help golfers connect for tee times, and  golf courses to find these golfers for their tee times.  

There are a few stakeholders for Deemples: 

  • 1.   Golfers 
  • 2.   Golf clubs (groups/societies/organisations) 
  • 3.   Golf courses 

Golfers

use Deemples primarily to find other golfers to golf with. They post  games and let others join, or just browse for games and join whichever  that fits.  

We reach out and market Deemples to golfers via: 

  • Cash incentives (in early stages of a city) 
  • Content marketing - blogs, social media
  • Paid digital ads - Facebook, Google, Apple
  • Banners and posters at golf facilities (golf courses, driving  ranges, and retail shops) 
  • Guerilla marketing - talking to golfers at golf driving ranges and  golf course restaurants.  
  • Activation - events (mostly golf competitions, but sometimes  also golf education workshops, golf clinics by coaches, etc) that  we (or a host we work with) host on Deemples. 
Golf clubs (groups/societies/organisations) 

hosts regular and consistent games for their members. Deemples  makes tracking sign ups, payments, handicaps, and even score  submission and results easy for the golf club. Aside from cost savings  from purchasing other golf software, and easy management of their  group, they can also recruit new members from the rest of the golfers  using Deemples. 

There’s also a chat in each game, so the hosts can provide timely  updates only to players joined in that game. 

We put a guide up for the best practices for hosting games on  Deemples: 

https://deemples.com/best-practices-for-hosting-golf-games-on-deemples/ 


Golf courses 

realised that instead of waiting for golfers to decide to play at their golf  course, golf courses started hosting their own games at their own golf  courses instead. This was a turning point since the golf courses had  access to their own tee times and knew what was available so golfers  joining their games didn’t have to call the golf course to check  availability and make reservations anymore. 

Special requests could also be made by the golfers to the golf courses  via the game chat. Golf courses also started using the game chat to get  feedback from golfers after the game.  

Golf courses were given special access to an admin panel that allowed  them to view both upcoming and previous games, and also chat into all  games happening at their golf course regardless if they were the hosts.  This allowed them to assist in any booking issues, and were able to get  feedback from golfers during and after the game.

Golf courses started pushing the use of Deemples more to their  customers/members since Deemples was always on, compared to the  phone lines only being available 12 hours of the day, when someone  was available to answer.  



Golfers outside of current markets   

There’s a last group of golfers that we are not able to satisfy at the  moment. These are golfers that are outside of the markets that  Deemples is available in. However, we get almost weekly emails and  app store reviews that constantly ask for Deemples to be available in  those markets, so that they too can find golfers for their golf games  easily.  

We constantly get requests from the large golfing markets, ie USA,  Canada, UK, Australia, and South Africa.

BUSINESS  MODEL

We are now at the most exciting part of the business, the monetisation  model, called Deemples Pay, an upfront payment feature.  

Golf courses have been used to using Deemples to host games, and  are able to chat into all other games happening at their golf course. So  we added on one more function that enabled them to accept payments  upfront from golfers via Deemples.  

Golf courses were getting booked out every weekend, but didn’t have  any means to collect payments from golfers until they showed up on the  game day and made payment over the counter just before the game. If  it rained out, or the golfer decides just now to show up, the golf courses  would have lost revenue and wouldn’t be able to replace it immediately,  since golfers knew not to show up without a booking over the  weekend. 

This posed a large cash flow threat to the golf course, and were happy  to utilise Deemples Pay that Deemples provided to them.

Golfers were already using Deemples to join games, and golf courses  were providing golfers with preferential rates for paying upfront, so  there was very low resistance from golfers to make payment to secure  their slots.

For every successful transaction that happened with Deemples Pay,  Deemples took a small percentage fee. 


Golf courses loved this upfront payment model because now: 

  • 1.   They were able to secure revenue upfront. 
  • 2.   No-shows and last minute cancellations have dramatically  reduced. 
  • 3.   Better visibility into revenue forecasts and can plan marketing  campaigns accordingly. 
  • 4.   Increased efficiencies during registration. Since payments were  already made, registrations took a fraction of the time, and  golfers were teeing off much quicker.  
  • 5.   Low resistance from golfers since they were already used to the  Deemples app anyway.  

Golfers also loved it because:  

  • 1.   They can secure slots without picking up the phone 
  • 2.   Fast registration times at the golf course   
  • 3.   They know that other players in the game will be showing up  too (more likely than not) since payments have already been  made.    

Within 9 months of launching Deemples Pay, we got 10 golf courses  signed up to accept payments upfront from golfers, processed over 5k  transactions, and have seen revenues grow by 50% MoM

MARKET

There are 60 million golfers in the world, playing on 30,000 golf  courses. In Malaysia there are 300,000 golfers, playing on 150 golf  courses. 

On average, a golfer golfs once a month (some play once a week, and  some play once a year), and a conservative estimate of golf fees per  round is USD30. That’s USD1.8B worth of golf per month, or about  USD20B per year! If they play golf, they’re also purchasing other golf  related products and services ie apparel, accessories, equipment,  lessons, events, and media, which adds up to a USD70billion golf  industry.  

North America (mostly USA) makes up 50% of the world’s golf, and  Australia has the highest density of golfers to population in the world.  

COMPETITION

Currently there are no similar platforms like Deemples (finding golfers)  that have gained meaningful traction

We divide the platforms into 3 different types for the entire golf booking  process:

Tee Time booking platforms 

Large and successful examples are: GolfNow, Teenet, Teeoff, Teetimes,  iSeekgolf, Golfscape, etc 

Booking platforms have worked in markets that have a higher middle  class segment ie USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. This is  because: 

  • 1. There’s a much higher density of golfers in these countries. 
  • 2. Cost of labor is high, so golf courses have more automation, and  people are used to self-serve.

It doesn’t work as well in markets with a large disparity of income, ie  South and SouthEast Asia, South America, and Africa. Oppositely, this is  because:

  • 1. Even though there’s a large number of golfers, the density of  golfers are still low in comparison to the population. 
  • 2. The population is generally in the low income bracket, hence  there is sufficient manpower to manually serve golfers. 
  • 3. The golfers are all in high income brackets and are used to  being served. 

Examples like GolfGreedy in SEA, GolfReserv and GoGolf in Malaysia,  GolfConnect24 in Vietnam, GreenGolf in Singapore, have all ceased as  there wasn’t a product-market fit. 


Tee Sheets (Club management software) 

There are 3 existing players in Malaysia: QiSoft, Albatrozz, and IFCA.   Examples outside of Malaysia are EZLinks and FORE! Reservations in  the US, MiClub and MpowerMSL in Australia, BRS in the UK, etc. 

In each country there are usually 1-2 dominant players that have been in  the business for about 20 years. Therefore, technology used are usually  dated and pricing models didn’t incentivise the technology providers to  innovate

Tee sheet companies are usually B2B businesses where golf courses  buy these platforms to manage their inventory. The golf course  receptionist will manually block out slots as they’re booked by golfers  via telephone, email, or walk ins


GPS/Scoring 

doesn’t help with the tee time booking process, but helps with  collecting data and providing information that will aid and assist in your  golf game.  

You can submit data for every stroke, or your total score, and these  apps will usually give you an analysis over time on your performance,  your updated handicap, and where you can improve. 

At the same time, because of the GPS features built in, it’ll give you  distance readings to the pin from where you’re located for each hole.  Some of these apps are built into wearables as well.  

Noteable GPS/Scoring apps: Hole19 from Portugal, 18birdies from San  Francisco, Swing x Swing from Connecticut, GolfShot, The Grint, and  many more. 


Finding golfers (similar to Deemples)

There were a few in the world who have tried but failed. A few  examples are GolfMatch, Golf Partners, TeeUp, and FindYourRound the  24 USA, MyCircle Golf in the UK, GreenCircles and GolfPartnerConnect in  Australia, be4golf and 4ball4all in South Africa, and more.  

The 2-sided many-to-many consumer marketplace type business model  is the hardest to execute. All of the companies mentioned above had  the passion to solve the problem but didn’t necessarily have the  knowledge and skills to execute well. It’s a network effect model, which  means the initial kick start had to be solid for it to continue to snowball


Deemples’ angle 

We feel this part (finding golfers) of the booking process is the most  crucial. If golfers can’t find another golfer that’s available to golf, then  they can’t book, can’t play, and can’t consume anything else related to  golf. It’s also an angle we can enter the market with, since it’s solving a  current problem, then subsequently building additional features to  complete the entire booking process.  

FUNDING

Deemples has previously raised a total of MYR 1.1M in the last 3 years  from angel investors.  

This round we’re looking to raise a minimum of MYR650k and a  maximum of MYR1.7M at a MYR8.4M pre-money valuation.

What are the funds going to be used for? 

In general, 70% will be allocated for new product development and  marketing, 20% for business development, and 10% for general  administration and other expenses. 

The product that we’re going to be focusing for this round is the new  tee sheet to help golf courses fully automate their booking process.  

Golf courses currently have Deemples that they use to host games and  let golfers join in easily. They also have Deemples Pay which allows  them to accept payments upfront from golfers to secure tee times and  solidify revenue for the golf course.

The last thing that’s missing to complete the entire booking process, is  to connect the golf course’s tee time inventory (tee sheet) with an  interface that golfers can interact with (ie golf course website,  Deemples, or any other platform), so that golfers can book and pay  without human intervention, based on current availability and prices.  

The objective is to help: 

  • Golfers have 24/7 access to an amazing tee time booking  experience.
  • Golf courses reduce manual processes, reduce human costs,  automate revenue, and increase yield, all happening whilst they  sleep.  

Very similar to buying a movie or airline ticket.  



To do this, a major technology overhaul has to be done with the  Deemples platform to make it more modular and scalable for future  geographical expansions. This process will take about 6 months  including internal QA and testing, before rolling out to the first golf  courses for beta testing. 


Pricing model and revenue projections 

We’ll be providing this new tee sheet for free to golf courses, and  generate revenue only from a % of the sales that go through the  platform.

Average golf course generates about MYR500k in revenue per month.  For conservative calculations we’ll use a MYR250k revenue golf course,  and take a flat 10% on all sales, estimated Deemples revenue = MYR25k  per month per golf course.

Rough estimates and timelines: 

  • GC = golf courses implemented for tee sheets
  • GMV = gross merchandise value, based on historical growth of  50% MoM.  
  • Gross margins based on 8% of GMV (estimated)
  • Expenses = MYR60k per month (70% product dev/marketing,  30% others) 

GMV is growing with acquisition of more golf courses for payments.

Tee sheet will increase per golf course revenue by 20x, and solidify  inventory supply. 


Stable state for Malaysia: 

If 50 golf courses (half of all golf courses in Malaysia) adopt the  Deemples tee sheet, the estimated revenue will be 50 golf courses x  MYR25k per month x 12 months = MYR15m per year. 

VISION
Global ambition 

Deemples was never built just for Malaysia.  

The problem of finding available golfers is a global one. There are only  so few golfers in the world, golfers love to travel for golf, and golfers are  having less and less time available.  

It is our mission to make sure golfers can find others to golf anytime in  any country they want to.

The booking process in the end will be a seamless one:

  • Get on the app 
  • Host a game at the golf course and time you want to play
  • Other golfers who can play join in 
  • Pay for your own rounds to secure your slot 
  • Make lifelong friends in the 4 hours of your game.  

The short term goal is to achieve profitability in Malaysia with existing  business models, then helping even more golf courses digitise their  business, which will in turn improve the organising and booking  experience for golfers. 

Malaysia only accounts for 0.5% of the world’s golf. If done right,  Deemples in Malaysia will contribute to a MYR 30M business.

Next markets would be larger, more mature golfing markets = AUNZ  and North America, which will make up 57% of the golfing population.  These markets, if Deemples serves them, could contribute another  potential MYR 3.5B of business.

The goal for golfers ultimately is so that setting up a golf game around  the world becomes seamless, the same way you set up your Tinder  dates, or your business meetings.  


The future of Deemples product 

The future of the Deemples product, is a platform for everything golf.  The playing of golf counts for about a USD20B industry, which includes  tee time bookings, and golf course revenues.  

The larger part is everything else that surrounds it, including equipment,  apparel, accessories, academies, media, events, and golf course  management, which sums up a USD70B industry.  

We’d be more focused on anything that can be done digitally: 

  • 1.   Marketplace
  • 2.   Content
  • 3.   Advertising
  • 4.   Academy 
  • 5.   Golf course management software 

Marketplace

The next biggest thing that golfers do online, aside from finding golfers  to golf with, is finding golf stuff to buy or sell. 

Since Deemples by then would already have the largest online pool of  golfer audience by city, a ​marketplace ​ makes sense to add on to  convenience to golfers for letting go of their used items, which  someone else will find of value.  

This would be like a Mudah/Carousell/Craigslist, but just for golf items.  It’ll make searching to buy golf items the easiest, and sellers to directly  reach the widest pool of golfers in one place.  


Content

Golf content is available everywhere these days. However, since we’d  already have a large audience pool, and golfers already trust the  Deemples brand for both finding golfers and trading equipment on the  30 marketplace, we’d be able to create valuable content that can reach  golfers efficiently.

Examples could be:  

  • Golf news
  • Golf equipment or golf course reviews 
  • Education on golf rules, etiquette, skill improvement 

We could either have an in-house team to produce this content, or  partner with content producers to facilitate this.  


Advertising

Finding golfers, tee time bookings, marketplace, and content would  have generated high amounts of traffic to Deemples platforms across  various markets. This will be the time where to monetise this traffic with  relevant advertising.  

Advertising could come in a few formats: 

  • Pure branding campaigns 
  • Activation campaigns that include golfing events, equipment  demos or trials, or even sign ups for various subscriptions.  

Whilst advertising can bring in good revenue and brand association, it  won’t be scalable if it includes offline activation campaigns. Therefore  when the time comes, we will outsource the activation advertising  business to an agency, so that internal human resources can be  minimized for a more efficient team. 


Academy

Only 1% of the world’s population golfs, that means 99% don’t. To get  these 99% into the game, they’d have to start somewhere. So  academies are imperative to the growth of the game.

Academies are also a non-scalable business, since the most effective  way is having 1-to-1 coaching. However, in recent years, there are  technologies being developed that allow digital coaching to happen for  students with coaches anywhere in the world. 

Digital coaching platforms could be an area Deemples invests in in the  future. 


Golf course management software

We’re already building a portion of this with the tee sheet product.  However, golf courses require a full fledge software to manage the  entire golf resort including: 

  • 1.   F&B sales and inventory
  • 2.   Memberships
  • 3.   Other sports bookings
  • 4.   Financial reporting 

We could either: 

  • Build the entire golf course management solution, or Partner with an existing solution, with the Deemples enhanced  tee-time booking solution integrated.  

Pricing models for this could either be: 

  • SaaS monthly subscription model, or more preferably, 
  • % of all sales transacted via the platform.  

  We like the latter since it aligns us with goals of the golf facilities, and  encourages us to continuously improve the product to encourage more  golfer participation in any part of the golf facility’s business. 

Potential Exits 

This will be cutting our vision short, but what we can see that’s possible:

Our vision is to grow the golf industry, removing barriers 1 by 1 that  threatens the growth of it. This is so that both existing and new golfers  have an improved experience of the game, and continue to play and  share the game throughout their lives.

INVESTORS

Previous rounds investors were from individual angels around the world  that love the game of golf. They like that Deemples is in a niche space  38 because just like all 2-sided marketplaces, domination is key, and niche  is much easier to dominate. 

FOUNDERS
David Wong - CEO 
  • APAC business development manager at Sequoia-funded Nugit
  • Client service director at Xaxis China (a WPP company) 
  • Country manager for China and Malaysia at ASX: Netccentric. 
  • BSc in Business, Indiana University, USA.  
  • 12 year golfer, with a current handicap index of 14.0. 
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwpy/
TEAM
Ahmad Daleen - CTO 

Tanjia Tarin Nishi - Content and Digital marketing