Singapore-headquartered fund manager Golden Equator Capital is leading a US$27 million Series B+ investment round in Indonesian fashion e-commerce startup Sale Stock.
GEC’s partners in the investment are Gobi Partners, SMDV, Alpha JWC, Convergence Ventures, Korea Investment Partners and MNC Media.
Sale Stock’s founding CEO Lingga Madu says the funding will be used to further strengthen Sale Stock’s position as the market leader in Indonesia and accelerate reaching profitability in the near term.
Sale Stock provides imported, local and in-house fashion labels for women and aims to bridge the online shopping gap by providing affordable clothing to low-to-middle income earners in Indonesia. The company currently carries over 15,000 SKUs and receives thousands of orders daily, making it the largest fashion-related vertical commerce in Indonesia in terms of daily orders.
Daren Tan, GEC managing partner, says the company is looking to invest across Southeast Asia in verticals where it can add strategic value – addressing bottlenecks or pain points.
“For example, Indonesia’s fragmented geography poses ongoing challenges to e-commerce and logistics, providing an opportunity for tech startups to solve and disrupt how products can now reach new customer bases in the most efficient manner.
“We see the value Sale Stock brings to Indonesia’s ecommerce space – its tech-driven platform successfully reaches Indonesia’s fast growing and relatively untapped middle-class markets in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Seventy per cent of Sale Stock’s customers in these cities are making their first e-commerce transactions, demonstrating the company’s unique advantage and potential for growth in Indonesia’s fast evolving digital economy,” Tan concluded.
Indonesia’s e-commerce market is being driven by the growth of the middle class and of tier 2 and 3 cities where access to retail is limited. According to a study by Google and Temasek, Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market is projected to reach US$88 billion by 2025, with Indonesia accounting for 52 per cent of the total market.
