Company formerly known as MoxyBilna raises $15m, relaunches as Orami

The Orami team introduces the company’s new branding.

Moxy and Bilna, two Southeast Asian women-focused ecommerce sites that merged in January 2016, today announced a US$15 million round of investment led by Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Digital Ventures (SMDV).

Other investors in this round are Gobi Partners, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Ardent Capital, and Velos Partners.

The merged entity used to call itself MoxyBilna, but that name is now history. The company says it will from now on be known as Orami. The new brand is a creation the team came up with to combine both Moxy’s and Bilna’s company values, explains Group CMO Shannon Kalayanamitr. It will take some getting used to.

Opening doors to China and India

Lead investor SMDV, the tech investment arm of Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas Group, isn’t new to Orami.

A brief genesis story: SMDV has money in Thailand’s Ardent Capital, which, in turn, acquired Moxy through its company WhatsNew. When Moxy expanded to Indonesia in June 2015, it was housed in SMDV offices, before it merged with Bilna and moved into their office. As part of the merger, the company moved its headquarter from Bangkok to Jakarta.

That Ardent Capital is back in this round therefore makes sense, but what about the other investors?

Gobi Partners with headquarters in China is a new face in this round, as is Velos Partners. Velos is a private equity firm co-founded by Eduardo Saverin, who also co-founded Facebook. The firm has a slew of startup investments across the globe, but one worth mentioning here is Hopscotch in India – a mom-and-baby online store, comparable to Bilna.

Saverin is also listed as investor in Orami with his own name. “Eduardo invested twice in this round, through Velos and directly into us,” Shannon explains.

Saverin’s relationship with the Bilna-side of Orami goes further back. Orami’s announcement today confirmed he angel-invested in Bilna in early 2015. This has long been passed around only as a rumor.

More than 5 million babies

Why Saverin is bullish on women-focused ecommerce in general, and Orami in particular, he expressed in a statement:

“The Orami team is on top of its game with a laser focus on the intersection of social commerce, content and women. Between Thailand and Indonesia, where more than 5 million babies are born a year, women not only serve as the gateway to the home but are the key drivers of a rapidly growing economy and future generation.”

Orami claims to have around 3 million visits a month, with up to 12,000 orders on peak days. 75 percent of its shoppers are female.

The US$15 million cash injection allows Orami to continue to compete in the costly ecommerce race. Though the investment was only made public today, it has been in the oven for a while and won’t change much for Orami’s current team and the company’s immediate goals.