This startup got funding from KK Fund, 500 Startups before it even launched

Bfab co-founders Pawel Netreba, Raeesa Sya, and Sergey Gaydar.

Malaysian startup Bfab tells Tech in Asia today that it raised a “mid six-digit USD” seed funding round led by KK Fund and followed by 500 Startups and Captii Ventures.

The funding happened during the last quarter, before Bfab had even launched. That means the investors were betting on just the idea and the caliber of the founders – all of whom have experience creating and building marketplaces.

Customers can book an appointment at 2 am and get instant confirmation.

Bfab, which stands for “be fabulous,” offers real-time, 24/7 booking of salons and beauty professionals by people who want hair, massage, spa, nail, waxing, and makeup services. It provides an extensive list of salons in Klang Valley and allow users to compare prices and rate the services.

Bfab wants to differentiate itself from other players by dealing with both customers and merchants “highly professionally.” The company plans to set up a fully fledged customer service in the form of a call center, and be hands-on in helping merchants manage their online pages and optimize their services.

But ultimately, the main competitive advantage is its real-time booking ability. Customers can book an appointment at 2 am and get instant confirmation. They can also access the calendars of salons wherever they are and see if they can drop in for a quick tidy-up within the next 30 minutes.

Now in beta, Bfab has signed around 200 salons and aims to bring this to a thousand soon. The site takes a cut of every successful booking.

As it has just launched, the company can’t provide figures yet for users and active users, or revenue. It plans to expand across Malaysia in the coming months, but the ambition is to go regional in 2.5 years.

Field expertise

Co-founders Pawel Netreba, Sergey Gaydar, and Raeesa Sya believe Bfab will address a major gap in the beauty service industry in Southeast Asia.

Pawel explains that there are several platforms in Europe and US that do real-time booking of salons really well, but “there’s none or no serious players” in Southeast Asia. “Not even Rocket Internet’s Vaniday does it,” he says.

We don’t need to learn from mistakes, we know exactly what to do and how.

This and the knowledge and experience the Bfab founders hold make him confident the company will make all the difference. Pawel was co-founder and managing director (Russia and CIS) at Rocket Internet’s online food delivery service Foodpanda, while Sergey served as a marketing consultant for daily deals site Groupon. Raeesa founded and sold Malaysian startup Lulu, which is a similar concept to Bfab but hasn’t launched yet, says Pawel. Raeesa sold Lulu in November before joining forces with the other Bfab founders.

The threat from competitors is real, but Pawel says “[we] have specific and relevant experience in building and scaling marketplaces like this. We don’t need to learn from mistakes, we know exactly what to do and how. This has effect on how professionally and efficiently a business is being run starting from sales to operations to marketing.”