Thailand’s Pomelo raises follow-on round, brings Series A to US$11 million
The company hopes to take advantage of a region in which 100 million people buy products online
Pomelo, a Bangkok-based fashion e-commerce platform announced today it has raised a follow-on round, officially closing its Series A round at US$11 million.
The follow-on was led by Jungle Ventures, who had also led the initial Series A investment round. Existing investors also participated while a new VC, 500 Tuk Tuks, and investors Andre Hoffman and Jonathan Price were added to the fold.
The company plans to use its money to further expand the business.
“E-commerce is clearly approaching a tipping point in Southeast Asia and we are lucky to be one of the leaders in the fast growing fashion vertical.” said Pomelo Co-founder and CEO David Jou in a statement.
Jou is not wrong. According to a recent report from Bain & Company, there are 150 million digital consumers in Southeast Asia, and 100 million of them do make purchases online (while the other 50 million use the internet for pre-purchase research). Furthermore, the report presented evidence that suggests local and regional players do a better job of capturing their market than ‘big name’ international companies.
Pomelo is hoping to take advantage of this to, “Provide the absolute best in terms of online fashion through our unique vertically integrated supply chain,” according to Jou.
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The startup also announced today the appointment of two new people to its top-level management team.
Meg Mistry, who was previously the Regional Creative Director at Zalora, will be the new Brand President.
James Lamrock was appointed to Regional Vice President of Operations after being the Chief Logistics Officer at Luxola for a time.
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Pomelo was launched in 2013 and has a core market in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore (although it does claim to have customers in 44 countries globally).
Besides its Bangkok headquarters, the company has offices in Korea, China and Indonesia.
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