Asian VCs back Portuguese competitor to Google’s app store in $4m investment round

Photo credit: Christian Betta

Android app store Aptoide today announced it raised a series A round of US$4 million. The investment was led by German E.ventures and included Asia-based VCs Gobi Partners and Golden Gate Ventures. Aptoide’s seed investor Portugal Ventures was also involved.

Aptoide says it will use the investment to accelerate growth and build strategic relationships with regional partners in target markets, with a focus on Southeast Asia and China. The company originally hails from Portugal but set up an office in Singapore in July, followed by a second international office in Shenzhen in October.

What differentiates Aptoide from other app stores like Google Play is that it allows you to create your own stores, similar to a Youtube channel, where you can create lists of your favorite apps. The customized channel concept could be particularly appealing to brands, because they can create a branded environment in which to showcase and promote their own apps.

See: Portuguese Google Play competitor Aptoide brings its branded app store concept to Southeast Asia

The company became interested in expanding in Asia after it noticed significant user growth in this region. “Our user base worldwide doubled year over year but in Asia it tripled,” Aptoide co-founder and CEO Paulo Trezentos tells Tech in Asia.

The team began negotiations with Asia-based investors in January 2015, after the company hit two important milestones. “We had reached break even, and for the first time we had more than 10 million monthly active users,” Paulo says. But it took almost another year for a deal to finalize.

“Raising money is already a difficult process involving many meetings and lots of patience,” says Paulo. “In our case it was even more challenging.” Paulo realized he needed to address a trust factor. As a Portuguese startup, the team had little previous relations with the Asian market and its investors. The company set up an office in Singapore to bridge that gap.

“We went to our seed Investor and asked them for a bridge loan to go ahead and open our first international office in Singapore. This sent a message to the potential investors that we are serious about our expansion plans [into Asia],” Paulo says.

“Now the focus is to guarantee that we [provide our app store] in all local Asian languages and also the content that users are looking for,” Paulo adds.

Aptoide features 500,000 available apps with about 3.5 million daily downloads. It claims to be the world’s largest independent app store. Since its launch in November 2011, Aptoide’s users have downloaded a total of 2 billion apps, the company says.

Other popular app stores beyond Google’s own Play Store are the Amazon app store, GetJar, Baidu’s Mobomarket, amd Mobogenie.

Comparison of search term popularity of Aptoide and some of its main competitors. Source: Google Trends