Soonicorn Social Bella doubled its revenue in 2020

Beauty startup Social Bella saw healthy revenue growth in 2020 as it expanded outside its home country of Indonesia and into Vietnam.

The company, which operates the ecommerce platform Sociolla, notched US$43.5 million in revenue for 2020 – almost double from the previous year. Gross profit also climbed by 2.2x to US$16.3 million.

The uptick in revenue is in line with the growing number of Social Bella registered users, which doubled amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s significantly higher than the average 15% increase of ecommerce users in Indonesia,” Social Bella’s co-founder and president Christopher Madiam tells Tech in Asia, citing data from Statista.

However, Social Bella’s loss from operations ballooned to US$23.2 million, a 4x jump compared to 2019. That seems to be mainly due to a provision for an expected credit loss of US$17.7 million, which only appeared in the company’s 2020 financials. Without this expense, it would have recorded US$5.5 million in operating losses – a comparable amount to the previous year.

While the company declined to discuss fincancial details, it said that it has been “really aggressive” in expanding its offline stores. The first Sociolla Store opened in August 2019, but it now has 29 stores in Indonesia and three in Vietnam.

“At the same time, the company also set up 24 warehouses covering all regions in Indonesia to support our local expansion, allowing us to directly serve more than 55,000 points of sales for our B2B businesses,” Madiam explains.

A Sociolla pop-up store in Jakarta / Photo credit: Sociolla

Social Bella also says that the number of customers making a repeat purchase within a year surged by 40%. The average order value (AOV) and daily orders also rose by 23% and 109%, respectively, compared to pre-pandemic levels.

A source familiar with the company told Tech in Asia that Social Bella is set to raise around US$150 million, propelling the company’s valuation to “several billion” dollars. The deal is not final, but it can be completed within months.

Online platform with offline ambition

Social Bella’s salary expenses shot up by around 2x, which could be attributed to having 1,800 employees across Indonesia, Vietnam, and India. Its marketing and research expenses also went up 3x in 2020.

However, the company contends that it doesn’t depend on major price cuts and promotions to attract customers. “We distinguish ourselves from the crowd by addressing relevant needs of local consumers in each of our campaigns,” Madiam says.

India-bound business?