Two months after his Seed round Announcement, Singapore-based startup Upmesh raised a $ 7.7 million Pre-Series A-Round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The new financing brings the total amount raised to 10.5 million US dollars.
Upmesh will use the Pre-Series A funding to expand its regional presence in Southeast Asia and launch its first Instagram live selling app and backend automation features such as logistics automation. It also plans to double its live commerce products.
Since its seed round, Upmesh has nearly doubled its online retailers in less than three months, with the retailer base growing 30% month on month. In October, Upmesh was used by nearly 300 live commerce retailers in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines with an annualized gross merchandise value of $ 40 million.
Upmesh’s tool helps retailers increase sales through analytics to identify their best-selling product items and patterns in buying behavior. The tool also offers e-commerce features that automatically capture orders placed in livestream comments and send a checkout link to buyers. At the same time, sellers go live on social media platforms such as Facebook Live and Instagram Live.
Upmesh competes with ecommerce platforms like Shopee and Lazada and SaaS tools including Shopline, but the company offers live commerce on social media that attract more buyers and audiences, and offer automation to help customers grow their business, said Wong Zi Yang, CEO and co-founder of Upmesh.
Upmesh is also tailoring its order entry tools to meet the expectations of sellers and buyers in various Southeast Asian countries, unlike other companies that offer order entry tools for live commerce like CommentSold and Dibsly, Wong said in October.
Credit: Upmesh
Upmesh users range from mom and pop street stores selling in live streams to complement pedestrian traffic to specialist live commerce vendors who move thousands of SKUs.
“Live commerce is changing e-commerce and shaping the buying behavior of digital consumers in Southeast Asia. While Upmesh offers a full stack of technology and services to enable live commerce, it is even more important to support large-scale small and medium-sized sellers. Small and medium-sized sellers from the fastest growing segment in eCommerce and their needs are largely unmet. Upmesh is focused on meeting their needs, ”said Kuo-Yi Lim, co-founder and managing partner of Upmesh.
“We are excited to join forces with Monk’s Hill Ventures on our mission to transform e-commerce. We agree that community is the next frontier for e-commerce and that live commerce is the ideal medium to bring community and commerce together, ”said Wong.
