aCommerce secures US$65 million investment

KKR-backed Emerald Media has led a US$65 million Series B funding round in Southeast Asian e-commerce enabler aCommerce.

The funds will be deployed expanding the business’ footprint into Vietnam and Malaysia and scaling strategic partnerships within the retail ecosystem in its current markets of Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The region’s residents are moving to online shopping at an increasingly exponential pace, growing 32 per cent year-on-year for the next 10 years according to research by Google and Temasek. The surge in online activities has caused giants such as JD.com, Amazon and Alibaba to expand their presence in Southeast Asia’s retail market.

aCommerce is already working with global brands in ASEAN including Samsung, L’Oreal, Unilever, Nestle, Philips and Mars.

“At the beginning of the region’s adoption of online, it was enough to simply have a website,” says Paul Srivorakul, aCommerce co-founder and group CEO. “Fast forward a few years later and brands are realising in order to stay ahead of the retail game, they need to be omnipresent and data hungry to fully control all pricing and consumer touch points.

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“Customers want to reach their favourite brands at any time through any platform. Clients leverage our ecommerce expertise, data-driven approach and local footprint to effectively distribute their products to become business-to-all.”

Srivorakul says aCommerce’s platform covers the entire customer journey online, from product sample distribution, collecting customer data to driving and attributing purchases across channels like the brand’s own webstore and the region’s top marketplaces.

“Having a strong partner like KKR and Emerald Media with their years of investment experience in the region will provide capital and critical connections in content and demand generation across Southeast Asia, which we see a great deal of convergence in. We can provide our clients an even better level of transparency and accountability hard to find elsewhere.”

Founded in June 2013, aCommerce has more than 1400 staff and offices and fulfillment centers in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

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