Indonesian social commerce enabler raises funds in Square Peg-led round

Desty, an Indonesia-based social commerce website builder, has raised another round of funding led by investment firm Square Peg.

The undisclosed raise followed a US$5 million pre-series A round held in November 2021, which was led by East Ventures and saw participation from Jungle Ventures, Fosun RZ Capital, and January Capital.

Desty founders / Photo credit: Desty

Founded in 2020 by former Alibaba executives Bill Wang and Mulyono Xu, Desty helps creators, influencers, and merchants promote and sell their products. It offers a landing page generator called Desty Page as well as a service called Desty Store, which lets users create online shops.

The company recently rolled out new features to improve merchants’ capacity to handle transactions, resulting in its gross merchandise value growing an average of 250% month on month over the last quarter.

Desty said its services reach almost one million users in Indonesia, representing a 33x year-on-year growth. 

The new funding will go to product optimization, team expansion, and user acquisition.

Xu, who also serves as Desty’s CEO, said Square Peg’s support will be a boon as the investment firm has backed companies with comparable business models across the globe. 

Square Peg manages more than US$1 billion in committed capital and has invested over US$200 million in Southeast Asian companies such as PropertyGuru, FinAccel, Pluang, and Doctor Anywhere. 

See also: Can Indonesia’s Shopify-like startups usurp ecommerce giants?