Deal focus: RedMart channels the Amazon spirit

No team should be so large that two pizzas are insufficient to feed all the members, according to Bezos. The idea is that, while some corporate functions can be centralized, others are overwhelmed by the numbers of voices involved. Better to create smaller clusters in which communication is swift, autonomy and accountability are clear, and therefore is progress swifter.

"We will implement this at RedMart in our own way," says Roger Egan (pictured), co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-based online grocery retailer. "The free-wheeling, chaotic start-up approach only gets you so far, and then you need to become a real company. You need mechanisms to help you scale up in an efficient manner."

RedMart hopes to tap directly into the Amazon DNA with the appointment of Colin Bryar as COO. He spent 12 years at the online retail giant, including two as technical advisor to Bezos. "We could keep on going and probably make some of the same mistakes Amazon made as it grew, or we could short-cut that by having someone really experienced on our team," Egan explains.

Bryar joined RedMart shortly before the company closed an oversubscribed bridge round of $26.7 million, which primarily came from existing backers such as Garena Online, SoftBank Ventures Korea and Visionnaire Ventures. The one newcomer was Far East Ventures, a division of Far East Organization, one of Singapore's largest property developers.

RedMart, which has now raised $54 million since its founding in 2011, owes its early success to filling the online grocery vacuum in Singapore and serving as a local equivalent of US-based FreshDirect. It now offers more than 15,000 products and has about 530 employees, providing an end-to-end delivery service so that customers receive goods on time and in good condition.

The next step is entering other markets in Southeast Asia and also leveraging the existing logistics infrastructure to move deeper into a world beyond groceries. RedMart wants to grow its marketplace, described by Egan as "an on-demand marketplace that delivers almost anything to anyone instantly."

Achieving scale means partnering up with sellers that offer a wider variety of product categories. The mark of success is when a critical mass of retailers wants to join the platform, recognizing that they can't achieve the same level of efficiency and service quality through in-house efforts.

Egan cites Amazon's cloud-computing division as an example. "Amazon Web Services had such scale and expertise that no individual brands, retailers or marketplace partners could do it as cheaply or as efficiently," he says. "They would rather just partner with the platform rather than build their own servers."

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