Korea's Althea raises $3.5m Series A

The company will use the capital to support its expansion plans through adding staff, particularly in marketing and logistics. Althea currently sells to consumers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, and it hopes to enter Thailand and Vietnam by the end of the year.

Founded in 2015, Althea aims to take advantage of the popularity of Korean pop culture in foreign markets. Memebox, a South Korea-based start-up that raised a $17.5 million Series B round last year, has a similar focus; but unlike Althea, it targets customers in the US and other Western markets.

"Our business is scalable so we can consider any market and any country, but we want to focus on Southeast Asia because it is the second largest region for Korean exports behind China. We really want to conquer this market first since the competition is stronger in China and the US," founder Frank Kang told Tech Crunch.

Althea claims an annualized run rate of more than $10 million in revenue, with more than 500,000 unique monthly visitors and monthly growth of 30%. The company is working on its own product label and hopes to launch the line by early 2017.

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