Category: Funding Rounds
Carsome from Malaysia Raises $170M From Taiwan’s MediaTek And Others.
Malaysian used-car marketplace, Carsome Group, said it has raised $170 million in a funding round from investors, including Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. This has cemented its position as Malaysia’s largest tech unicorn as it’s now valued at $1.3 billion.
The valuation comes as Southeast Asian startups are attracting strong interest from regional and global funds due to robust growth rates, with investors taking bets on post-pandemic plays.
“The most important thing we are trying to tackle is the distrust that’s associated with the used-car industry,” said Carsome’s co-founder and chief executive, Eric Cheng, adding that consumers were becoming more open to buying cars online during lockdowns that were imposed in many countries over the past year.
Carsome is a six-year-old company that runs in Indonesia,Thailand and Singapore. Their competitors include SoftBank Vision Fund 2-backed Carro and OLX Auto in Indonesia, part of OLX Group, which runs global trading platforms.
Cheng said Carsome has been ramping up its retail centres and expanding its offerings, which include a five-day refund policy and a one-year warranty.
Chief financial officer, Juliet Zhu, told Reuters that Carsome is looking to almost boost its revenue to nearly $1 billion this year from last year and expects to turn profitable on an operating level in 2022.
It had raised a total of more than $100 million in its previous funding rounds.
Zhu said Carsome is considering listing in the United States of America within the next 12 months and have been in talks with sponsors of blank check companies.
“We have always been envisaging ourselves to be listing on U.S exchanges,” Cheng said, citing comparable valuations with U.S-listed car marketplaces available for investors.
Backed by the likes of Asian venture capital firm Gobi Partners and an arm of Mitsubishi UFG Financial Group, Carsome will use the funds to extend its spate of acquisitions.
This year, Carsome acquired a stake in a Jakarta-based car and motorcycle auction service and agreed a deal with Australia-listed iCar Asia, which offers listing sites in Southeast Asia.
Carsome said one of the largest sovereign wealth funds from the region joined the latest funding, but it declined to identify the fund. Carsome also secured new credit facilities of $30 million.
Rothschild & Co is the financial adviser on the fundraising.
Pasarnow, an Indonesian e-groceries Platform New Cities Expansion with 3.3 million USD Funding
An Indonesia e-grocer platform, Pasarnow successfully funded 3.3 million USD and has stated that this amount will be spent on expanding their regional coverage and increase their grocery supply-chain capabilities and last-mile solutions. The funding led by East Ventures also saw participation from angel investors including Skustar Capital, Amand Ventures, and SMDV.
Pasarnow will be splitting the funds into different parts of their operation expansion – stretch out to new cities, expand the team, upgrade system and infrastructures, and grow warehouses. An additional characteristic to the existing ten warehouses across Greater Jakarta would be their instant delivery that promises a fresh and speedy solution to customers.
CTO and co-founder of Pasarnow, Donald Woo said, “Currently, Pasarnow operates in Greater Jakarta and Bandung, with over 100 full-time employees and 200 daily workers and driver-partners,” He further added that this funding will pave the way to cater to a larger pool of customers as well as greater tech capability.
Pasarnow was founded in 2019 by Woo, Cindy Ozzie, and James Rijanto, setting their sight to streamline Indonesia’s complicated fresh product supply chain and deliver promising quality products to customers with its own platform.
“Ensuring product freshness when it reaches the customers is supremely challenging,” said Rijanto.
He added, “Food products like fruits, vegetables, and frozen meat are susceptible and perishable, requiring fast and temperature-controlled delivery, which causes expensive logistics costs. That is why Pasarnow has been investing heavily in our technology and operational infrastructures to solve these issues. Furthermore, having a multi-channel platform helps us in achieving faster economies of scale and in creating greater efficiency in our operations”
Pasarnow has different channels tailored to meet customers’ specific needs through a divergent set of prices, key features, and promotions. The operational back-end collects all orders from customers and develops a prediction system that helps all farmers and supplies to better schedule their delivery and harvests. In turn, it allows Pasarnow to deliver the freshest quality products at an affordable price to customers.
India’s upGrad Enters Unicorn Club with $185m Funding from IFC, Temasek and Others
Educational technology platform for higher education upGrad is now part of the unicorn club as they have raised $185 millions at a valuation of $1.2 billion, it announced on Monday.
Unicorn is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion.
Temasek, IFC (International Finance Corporation) and IIFL took part in the funding, said the company i a statement.
Unicorn” is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion
“We are very focused on our path to being in the top 3-5 companies globally in edtech and serving the 1 billion workforce across the age group of 10-60 years. We will announce further updates on M&As, and unlocking value as they unfold. Yes, the last value was at $1.2 billion, but as I keep saying, we are not a fan of the tag name unicorn – for us, it is only a means to a much larger goal,” said Ronnie Screwvala, chairperson and co-founder of upGrad.
upGrad is owned by Entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, Phalgun Kompalli, and Mayank Kumar. It offers job-linked online degrees, certificate course and diplomas in collaboration with top Indian and global universities. The online platform has claimed to have helped over a total of 1 million registered learners in over 50+ countries.
Last week, the company announced that it has acquired upskilling upskilling platform KnowledgeHut in order to mark its entry into the short-duration course market. This acquisition will allow upGrad to make its presence and offerings for international markets in North America, West Asia, and Southeast Asia.
In May, upGrad had also acquired Impartus which is a video-learning solutions provider for Rs150 crore. In total, the company has made seven acquisitions and acqui-hires so far. They are competing with other Indian unicorns such as Byju’s and Unacademy.
Logistics Startup Parcel Perform Raises $20 Million In Series A Round
Singapore-based delivery experience platform Parcel Perform has secured a total of US$20 million in a series A investment that was spearheaded by Cambridge Capital. Softbank Ventures Asia and existing backers Wavemaker Partners and Investible have also joined the round.
Parcel Perform assists e-commerce firms in optimizing their logistics operations with data integrations, parcel tracking, delivery notifications, and logistics performance reports in real time.
Parcel Perform is co-founded by Arne Jeroschewski, who previously led unicorn Zalora. The platform currently manages over r100 million parcel tracking updates on a daily basis. The company claims to be profitable, with revenue growing over 5 times since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
With this fresh funding, the company has plans to build out its technology offerings and invest in artificial intelligence solutions. This includes scaling its proprietary Date of Arrival prediction engine, which will allow customers to know exactly when their parcels will arrive. The company also hopes to add 50 more employees globally by the end of the year.
Parcel Perform has also recently expanded its business-to-consumer website, Parcel Monitor into a global community page that provides free access to logistics data insights for e-commerce logistics professionals. Parcel Monitor was originally a tracking service for customers. It has offices in Singapore, Vietnam, and Germany.
BharatPe Joins The Unicorn Club With Threefold Rising Valuation to $2.85 Billion
BharatPe, merchant payments, and financial services provider, has raised $370 million in a primary and secondary fundraising round led by new investor Tiger Global Management of New York.
Dragoneer Investor Group and Steadfast Capital are two other new investors who participated in this round.
BharatPe joins India’s burgeoning list of unicorn startups with the funding, with its valuation more than tripling to $2.85 billion in only six months.
In February 2021, the company raised $108 million at a valuation of $900 million.
As part of the current fundraising round, new investor Tiger Global invests $100 million in the firm, with Dragoneer and Steadfast contributing $25 million each.
The existing investors have contributed a total of $200 million to the company’s current Series E fundraise, which includes Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, Amplo, and Ribbit Capital.
The round also includes a $20 million secondary fundraising to provide liquidity to the company’s employees and angel investors. For BharatPe employees with vested options, this is the third liquidity event.
Suhail Sameer, the company’s group president, has been promoted to CEO and will be in charge of monetization, lending, and the company’s recent banking foray. In addition, he will also join the board of directors of BharatPe.
Ashneer Grover, the co-founder of BharatPe, will take over as managing director of the company. He will continue to lead the company’s strategy, technology, product functions, and working capital financing efforts.
In an interview, Grover mentioned they planned to raise $250 million initially, but the response was highly overcrowded.
They believe the $350 million quick raise will provide them with sufficient runway for the next three years, following which they may consider a public market listing.
Grover added that they still have cash in the bank from their Series C and D rounds and an overall liquidity runway of $500 million, putting them in excellent stead for future development.
He claims that the present financing would be used to tenfold the company’s existing business lines over the following two years.
In collaboration with Centrum Financial Services, BharatPe would use the money to help troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank. In June, the purchase of PMC Bank by Centrum and BharatPe was approved by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Grover also informed that with RBI approval in June, they will invest $250-$300 million (or up to 2,224 crores) in PMC Bank alongside Centrum over the following two years.
However, Grover refused to comment on the PMC Bank acquisition’s future ambitions.
Merchant payments, lending, and financial services offered to merchant partners are among BharatPe’s core business verticals.
It now has a presence in more than 140 cities and intends to expand to 300 towns in the next two years. It also intends to increase the number of point-of-sale devices deployed from 100,000 to 400,000 during the following two fiscal years.
To far, BharatPe has granted almost $300 million in funding to merchant partners and has a $100 million outstanding loan book.
It intends to increase its entire funding to $3 billion by March 2023, with a $1 billion outstanding loan book.
To support this credit expansion, the company plans to raise $700 million in debt capital over the next two years.
The BharatPe platform now processes about $10 billion in yearly payment value, with the firm aiming to reach $30 billion by 2023.
BharatPe also just announced the purchase of PAYBACK India, a multi-brand loyalty platform, to assist its 7 million offline retailers in implementing consumer incentives and loyalty programs.
This marked BharatPe’s debut into the customer-facing sector, as the business intends to launch “Buy Now, Pay Later” services on the PAYBACK platform.
“For the next three years, we do not expect to make any further acquisitions for inorganic growth and will continue to focus on developing our existing lines of business organically,” Grover added.
By the end of the fiscal year 2023, BharatPe hopes to have doubled its merchant partners to 14 million.