SINGAPORE - Eight start-ups in areas like education, e-commerce and data analytics form the inaugural intake of Singapore Press Holdings' (SPH) corporate accelerator.

Over 10 weeks, they will be guided by a business mentor in business, customer and marketing strategies. At the end of this period, they will make a pitch to investors for funding.

SPH Plug and Play introduced the start-ups to investors and business partners at a party held at News Centre, SPH's main office in Toa Payoh on Tuesday evening.

The eight start-ups are Fashory who want to help women discover clothes that suit them; Snapask an app to connect students to teachers; Bolt which wants to streamline editorial workflow for news organisations; employee referral system Yellow Elevator; social media analytics Circus 20Twenty; Amoeba Software Studio/Tutate which helps students undertake assessment tests; e-commerce analytics platform Plus Margin and creative learning programme Imaginators.

These start-ups were selected because they were working on interesting ideas that are relevant to SPH's businesses such as educational technology, recruitment and lifestyle. In the long term, they will build a pipeline of high-growth, innovation-driven tech start-ups to address challenges faced by the media industry

Each team received $30,000. They are based at Bash start-up facility located in Blk 79 at JTC LaunchPad @ one-north.

The media giant's accelerator is a joint venture comprising three parties, namely SPH, Infocomm Investments , the venture arm of the Infocomm Development Authority and Plug and Play, a Silicon Valley-based accelerator.