Hong Kong-based AfterShip raises $1M series A round from IDG-Accel

AfterShip, the Hong Kong-based startup that offers package tracking software for big-name ecommerce firms, announced today that it completed a $1 million series A round from China’s IDG-Accel.

The funding comes almost two years after it received its initial seed round from Australia’s Business Switch, which came while the startup was still in open-beta phase (meaning, in this case, it hadn’t begun charging customers).

Andrew Chan, cofounder of AfterShip, tells Tech in Asia that IDG-Accel made an obvious match for the team when it came to raising funds.

“We couldn’t rely on crowdfunding to raise money, and we only wanted to deal with one party as an investor in order to minimize legal work,” says  Chan. “There are almost no VCs in Hong Kong, so the closest place [to find investors] would be China. We liked IDG because they have a background in ecommerce and have invested in some big companies before, like Baidu and Tencent.”

Unpacking it all

Ecommerce package shipping is one of those things that’s easy to overlook… until things go awry. Merchants tend to forget about their shipments as soon as the product leaves the warehouse, and usually only provide tracking numbers that customers can input manually into DHL, UPS, or Fedex’s database. Customers, meanwhile, might enjoy the world’s best online shopping experience, but all it takes is one lost order to prompt a writeup on RipoffReport.com.

The AfterShip team, which consists of just three full-time employees, aims to reduce shipment-related headaches by offering an API to carriers and ecommerce vendors that helps merchants keep track of the status of each shipment.

AfterShip lets small and medium-sized merchants use its API and software for free. Vendors who wish to use AfterShip to directly notify buyers on the status of their packages via email are charged a fee per package, which varies depending on the number of monthly orders.

To date, AfterShip has over 15,000 customers around the world, 60 percent of which reside in the US. The company tracks over three million shipments per month, and serves well-known merchants including Groupon, Zalora, and Etsy.

Hip to ship