Hopu leads $100m Series D for Singapore’s Trax

It comes within a month of the company securing the bolt-on acquisition of US shopping rewards app developer Shopkick for an undisclosed sum. Total funding to date comes to more than $350 million, including a $125 million round last year led by Boyu Capital.

"We are convinced that Trax can grow rapidly in China's consumer landscape,” Gunther Hamm, a managing director at Hopu, said in a statement. “China's retail market has digitalized rapidly, in both online and new offline retail concepts. Yet the vast majority of China's brick and mortar stores remain underserved in store management, assortment and optimization.”

Trax supplies packaged goods retailers with data analytics technology that combines in-store image recognition equipment, artificial intelligence processing, and an internet-of-things platform. Hopu has described the company as “becoming essential” to the decision-making process for major companies in the retail space. It has more than 175 clients in some 50 countries.

Warburg Pincus, which backed a $64 million round in 2017, is the largest shareholder. Other investors include Singapore hedge fund Broad Peak, UK-based Investec Bank, and DC Thomson, a media company best known for longstanding UK children’s magazine The Beano. The fresh capital will be used for an expansion in China and internationally, as well as for product development.

Earlier this year Trax acquired LenzTech, a Chinese company that develops similar in-store computer vision and big data technology systems, while also operating what is said to be the largest crowdsourcing platform for helping retailers improve customer outreach. The acquisition coincided with Trax setting up an R&D center focused on the retail industry’s unique challenges.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Support services
• Expansion
• Singapore
• Hopu Investment Management
• Growth capital