TGVest helps Taiwan's KKday lift Series C to $95m
Taiwanese e-commerce and travel platform KKday has closed a protracted Series C capital raising process with USD 95m. Local private equity firm TGVest Capital led the latest tranche.
KKday raised USD 75m in Series C funding in 2020, with Cool Japan Fund and Taiwan’s National Development Fund taking the lead. Monk’s Hill Ventures and MindWorks Capital also backed the round.
The extended nature of the round is closely related to travel restrictions related to COVID-19. Before the initial outbreak of the pandemic, the company had aimed to raise USD 100m for an aggressive international expansion. That ambition was temporarily pulled back in favour of developing sales software for tourism booking companies called Rezio.
Nevertheless, KKday has gone on to become one of Taiwan’s leading candidates for a major VC-backed IPO because it has continued to grow despite grounded international flights. This was achieved by transitioning to a domestic tourism model and introducing several pandemic-related safety features.
The latest funding will be used to increase headcount by more than 40% by 2023, while deepening the footprint in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The plan is to increase new merchant adoption of Rezio by 100% within the year. Rezio has been used by 1,600 merchants and 2.7m travellers globally to date.
KKday claims its gross merchandise value surpassed pre-COVID levels in June, and that travel bookings in Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea have exceeded pre-COVID levels. Japan, where KKday is backed by local travel giant HIS, has proven to be among the most important expansion markets.
“Traveler demand is rebounding at a fast pace as borders reopen,” Claire Lai, a managing director of TGVest, said in a statement. “With this funding round, KKday will be in a strong position to capture market share and value as travel continues to reopen and digital transformation continues to be a long-term trend.”
TGVest was established in 2016 as an independent spinout from UMC Capital, the investment arm of Taiwanese chip foundry United Microelectronics Corporation. It represents a growing embrace of consumer, digital and software-oriented investment and business development activity in Taiwan’s traditionally industrials-focused technology space.
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