
Inspire Ventures leads $10m round for Thailand's aCommerce
Inspire Ventures has led a $10.7 million Series A round of funding for aCommerce, a Thailand-based e-commerce services provider.
The round was organized by existing backers Ardent Capital with participation from NTT Docomo, Sumitomo Corporation Equity Asia, Sinar Mas Indonesia, Asia Pacific Digital, CyberAgent (CA) Ventures, JL Capital and unnamed angel investors.
The deal represents the largest Series A for a Thai venture and one of the largest in Southeast Asia to date. In December, aCommmerce raised a $3.1 million bridge financing round led by NTT with CCA Ventures.
Launched in 2013 with backing from Ardent, aCommerce was set up to address the scaling problems in e-commerce by providing end-to-end solutions in Indonesia and Thailand. The company now has 250 staff in four offices in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines. It plans to expand to Malaysia and Vietnam.
The new funding will be used to strengthen the firm's logistics infrastructure, as well as for investments in order management, warehousing, and delivery management systems.
In March, Paul Srivorakul - CEO of aCommerce and co-founder of Ardent Capital - told AVCJ that when looking for potential e-commerce targets in Asia, he finds that many new players are in a Catch-22 situation when it comes to scale.
"They have no scale or efficiency and can't get funding, and we don't want to fund them because they can't scale. It's a vicious circle," he said "Based on our experiences, we thought that if we could take some of that pain away we would not only help small businesses but we would also get all the big brands coming in, all the retailers going online."
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