StoreHub, a Malaysian startup that helps retailers digitize their businesses, has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. Vertex Ventures led the round.
PRESS RELEASE
StoreHub, a startup that helps retailers digitize their businesses, has closed a $ 5.1 million Series A round led by Vertex Venture to expand in Southeast Asia.
The startup was founded in 2014 and offers point-of-sale technology and digital services to retailers. The idea is to help connect the long line of less sophisticated physical traders online to help them digitize their finances and inventory management.
StoreHub charges around $ 39 per month for its POS services, for which it sells hardware, and is currently present in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, where it claims to work with some 3,200 retail stores. Now it has plans to expand to other markets in Southeast Asia. Nothing is immovable, but the company is looking at Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, among other destinations.
“We decided to enter the sea because 50-80 percent of retailers do not have an established system,” Wai Hong Fong, founder and CEO, who previously founded Australian e-commerce store startup OZHut , told TechCrunch in an interview . “The retail landscape is changing, we’ve seen it in the US. UU And China, and that’s because all consumers have a mobile phone. ”
Beyond more countries, StoreHub also aims to expand the services it offers its retail customers who pay to cover digital marketing, e-commerce and more.
“POS is the entry point, then we have to be the center,” said Fong. “From there we can help companies diversify.”
Fong himself is based in Malaysia, but his co-founder and CTO of the company Congyu Li is based in Shanghai, where he heads the technology team of the startup. The new funds will allow that team to increase as part of a recruitment wave aimed at doubling the current StoreHub staff of 80 employees.
Li and Fong met in China, where Fong moved after leaving OZHut. Li spent five years working for Microsoft before founding StoreHub.
In addition to Vertex Ventures, which is part of the sovereign group of Singapore Temasek, Cradle Seed Ventures of Malaysia, Accord Ventures and Fintonia Group also participated in the financing round.
