SUMMARY
Shopmatic Will Use The Funding To Expand Its Global Footprint
Ecommerce enabler Shopmatic has raised about $5.7 Mn in Series AA funding round led by tech focussed VC firm ACP Pte Ltd. The round also saw participation from Singapore-based fund Spring Seeds Capital Pte Ltd.
As a part of the funding round, Sameer Narula, Managing Partner, ACP, is joining Shopmatic’s Board.
Shopmatic was launched in December 2014 by three Paypal veterans – Yen Ti Lim, Anurag Avula, and Kris Chen. In 2015, it raised $1.5 Mn from undisclosed investors.
Shopmatic provides sellers with an entire ecosystem of selling online for their customers. From developing a web store to listing one on marketplaces and social networks, to give insights on how to sell online, and to help fix the payment and logistics, they help a user manage everything that is required to help a business grow.
Headquartered in Singapore, Shopmatic has offices in Bengaluru and Gurugram in India as well as offices in Hong Kong. With the funding, the company further plans to expand to Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia among others, apart from the Middle East.
The company launched operations in India in October 2015 and in November 2016, it launched a mobile app, Go for Indian sellers.
In December 2016, Shopmatic acquired a majority stake in the Taiwan-based technology consulting firm, 5X Ruby to strengthen its research and technology, team.
The company claims have a user base of about 75,000 merchants and is adding about 700-800 merchants every day, with plans to grow the user base by two to four times in the next 12 months.
“We support small and medium enterprises as well as individual entrepreneurs. We are very keen on building the individual-entrepreneur space, for instance, homemakers or students. Where we have been successful is that we have broken that barrier. About 95% of our customers have their own creation. We don’t have resellers or sellers of commoditised products like a mobile phone,” Avula told Mint.
Other Indian companies like Martjack and Buildabazaar are providing similar services like Shopmatic. Besides these startups, there are also end-to-end ecommerce enablers like Zepo and KartRocket that are directly competing with Shopmatic.
