Northstar leads pre-Series C for Singapore's Una Brands
Northstar Group had led a USD 30m pre-Series C round for Una Brands, a Singapore-based brand agglomeration platform that operates across Asia.
It comes just six months after a Series B of USD 30m led by Alpha JWC Ventures and White Star Capital. Una has now raised approximately USD 130m since its establishment two years ago. A seed round of USD 40m in May 2021 – comprising equity and debt – was followed by an all-equity Series A of USD 15m six months later. The equity-debt split of the most recent round has not been disclosed.
“As we come to our second birthday, I am proud of what the entire Una team has been able to achieve within such a short time – USD 70m revenue run-rate, in sight of group EBITDA breakeven, and all this navigating in the backdrop of some of the toughest environment I have seen in my over 10 years of building companies in Asia Pacific,” co-founder and CEO Kiren Tanna said in LinkedIn post.
Brand agglomeration platforms have proliferated across Asia in recent years. 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 agglomeration at scale by concentrating almost exclusively on Amazon vendors. Rainforest, another Singapore-based aggregator, has largely adopted the Thrasio model. It raised USD 45m in funding last June led by Southern Capital.
Other platforms concentrate on individual geographies. 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 acquired more than 20 e-commerce brands to date and claims to be more active on Shopee and Lazada than on Amazon.
Geographical diversity is tempered by discipline in category selection – the intent being that domain expertise minimizes due diligence errors while creating cross-selling opportunities. The company concentrates on products that appeal to young mothers and millennials.
The team now numbers more than 200 spread across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, India and China. Staff are 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.
Northstar closed its fifth private equity fund on USD 590m in late 2021 and it reached a first close of USD 90m on a debut venture capital fund at the start of this year. The overall target for the VC vehicle is USD 150m. The firm’s strategy has evolved over time to prioritise consumer and financial services, with a strong technology overlay.
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