Raising brands
- 500-backed e-commerce aggregator Una Brands has raised US$15 million in a Series A round led by White Star Capital and Alpha JWC. The startup launched just five months ago with a US$40 million equity and debt seed round.
- The funding will be used to accelerate the growth of its brand portfolio and operations. Co-founder and CEO Kiren Tanna added the startup plans to raise further debt and equity. The company now has a workforce of 90 in seven offices across the Asia Pacific.
- To date, Una Brands has acquired more than 15 brands. It claims the first ones have recorded a 50% increase in sales and profits.
- Kiren shared that Una Brands is building proprietary technology to help its brands scale to its professional warehouse fulfillment infrastructure.
- More details on TechCrunch.
Stacking up
- 500-backed fashion analytics startup Omnilytics has launched Fashion Trade Insights, a new module on its platform. It is designed for small and medium enterprises and small fashion brands, enabling them to strengthen their market, competitor, and trend analyses.
- The module simplifies the market research process by consolidating several existing capabilities in the Omnilytics platform to provide a starting point for newcomers to retail data analytics.
- Kendrick Wong, co-founder and CEO, said, “Amid mounting competition across the global fashion and retail ecosystem, brands need the right data that can enable them to make better business decisions. Armed with real-time insights, brands of any size and stage will be able to better capitalize on growth opportunities in their respective markets.”
- According to the startup, over 50 fashion and retail brands have begun using the module. So far, some have seen more than a 20% increase in sell-through rate, over 17% increase in product margins, and a 15% reduction in deadstock.
- Read the full statement here.
Delivering value
- Dana von der Heide, co-founder and COO of 500-backed Parcel Perform, was featured in an interview in which she shared its track record so far and what’s next for the logistics startup.
- Parcel Perform claims to execute more than 100 million parcel updates daily and integrates with over 700 carriers globally.
- “Customers like Nespresso have seen that their end-consumers revisit the track and trace webpage 4-6 times during the delivery time window when they want to know when their parcels will arrive,” Dana shared. “We have also managed to successfully reduce the amount of inquiries by 45% – a huge cost saving.”
- The startup is currently staffing over 100 employees and it is looking to grow the team to 150 by the end of 2021. Its recent US$20 million Series A funding will be used to accelerate the startup’s growth and development of its technology stack. It will also continue to expand, with aims to open a regional headquarters in North America.
- Read the full interview here.
