Singapore's ViSenze raises $10.5m Series B

Other investors included Raffles Venture Partners, Phillip Private Equity, UOB Venture Management and SPH Media Fund, the investment arm of media company Singapore Press Holdings. FengHe Fund Management - a firm founded by Alibaba ex-CTO John Wu - also participated in the round.

The capital will be used to advance the company's image recognition technology, expand its R&D team and grow its office presence in the US and India. ViSenze, which was spun out of a research joint venture between the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University of China, is also planning to launch new bases in China and the UK.

Its AI technology combines machine learning and computer vision to recommend visually similar items to more than 250 million online shoppers per month across e-commerce platforms, social media and video networks. The company claims to have increased revenue during the past 12 months by more than 300% year on year, with clients including Rakuten Ichiba, Myntra and Lazada.

"ViSenze has achieved impressive market traction with their groundbreaking AI technology in the e-commerce space," Saemin Ahn, managing partner at Rakuten Ventures, said in a statement. "With their innovation DNA, they are developing new solutions, bringing simplified shopping experiences on digital content platforms. Their new solutions for video commerce have huge potential too."

The investment is aiming to leverage a booming global e-commerce space which is now worth some $1.7 trillion, according to eMarketer. The industry consultant projects that online shopping will value of $3.6 trillion by 2019, accounting for about 13% of all retail activity worldwide.

Rakuten Ventures is the venture capital arm of Japanese internet services company Rakuten and manages a $200 million global fund. It was active in Singaporean e-commerce last month with participation in a $35 million Series B funding round for flea market operator Carousell.

WI Harper closed its eighth VC fund earlier this year at $175 million with a remit to invest in early-stage Asian technology companies. Enspire Capital targets Asian and US technology start-ups from offices in Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong and San Francisco.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• South Asia
• North America
• Expansion
• Technology
• Consumer
• Singapore
• India
• USA
• Rakuten
• WI Harper Group
• UOB Venture Management
• TMT