Singapore's Una Brands raises $30m Series B

The company confirmed the capital raise in a statement but didn’t specify the equity and debt components.

Una has received USD 100m in funding to date, including a USD 40m seed round – comprising equity and debt – in May 2021 from 500 Global, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital, Global Founders Capital, and former Lazada CEO Maximilian Bittner. Six months later, it closed an all-equity Series A of USD 15m and further funding followed that.

As of February, Una had acquired approximately 25 brands. One of them was Australia-based Bellaforte, a retail platform specialising in unbreakable glassware that was founded by a 10-year-old. Aged 15, he sold to Una for AUD 1m (USD 650,000).

Brand agglomeration platforms have proliferated across Asia in the past 18 months. They leverage an understanding of e-commerce marketplace rankings, ratings, and reviews to identify and acquire emerging brands; and then they apply expertise across data science, logistics, and marketing – as well as economies of scale from running a consolidated back-end operation – to accelerate growth.

Most platforms focus on a single marketplace – US-based Thrasio is credited with proving the agglomeration at scale by concentrating almost exclusively on Amazon vendors, a strategy followed by PE-backed Nebula Brands in China – or on a single geography. In India, for example, the likes of Mensa Brands and GlobalBees rapidly achieved unicorn status.

Una is different in that it covers multiple marketplaces and multiple geographies. The company has acquired brands in Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, China, and the US, and it is more active on Shopee and Lazada than on Amazon.

The team of 150-plus is segmented equally into acquisitions, technology, and operations and growth initiatives. There is also a proprietary system that tracks brands in different markets and digests the various data streams into a single comparable format.

“It is not just data collection, but also fulfilment. We solved this by working with logistics partners across the region and integrating them with our technology. It makes us scalable,” Kiren Tanna, co-founder and CEO of Una, told AVCJ earlier this year.

“I think everyone will be multi-channel eventually. But what we’ve seen global platforms do is identify the largest Amazon markets and work their way down the list. Southeast Asia is different because it is dominated by local distribution channels.”

Una also claims to temper this geographical diversity by being disciplined in its category selection, hoping that domain expertise minimizes due diligence errors while creating cross-selling opportunities. It concentrates on products that appeal to young mothers and millennials.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Consumer
• Early-stage
• Singapore
• e-commerce
• Alpha JWC Ventures