Retail services startup Ebizu rings up $139K in funding

Malaysian-based retail support platform Ebizu announced today it has received commercialization funding of MYR 500,000 (US$139,000). The funding comes from CIP 500, a commercialization fund aimed to support Malaysian startup companies and provided by Malaysian Ministry of Finance agency Cradle Fund. The agency offers pre-seed funding of up to MYR 150,000 (US$42,000) to teams to “develop their innovative technology ideas into prototypes or proof-of-concepts.” Seed funding of up to MYR 500,000 (US$139,000) is also offered to startups so as to enter the market.

Ebizu makes tools like point-of-sale (POS) apps, loyalty programs, and analytics for businesses. It combines cloud and mobile to provide a one-stop shop for retailers who want to take their business online and connect with their customers. “We’d like to applaud Cradle for strengthening the commercialization pipeline for Malaysian technopreneurs,” Rohit Maheswaran, co-founder and director of Ebizu, tells Tech in Asia. “It is heartening to see Malaysian startups making waves regionally and we’re glad to be part of this group that believes good ideas have strong potential to succeed in the regional ecosystem.”

Expanding to Indonesia and beyond

The company will be looking to use this funding to expand its beacon network across the regional retail landscape. Ebizu is going to purchase 10,000 beacons – little gadgets that will be used for its proximity marketing platform. The Bluetooth Low Energy devices work together with the platform’s infrastructure to push notifications to nearby smartphones when browsing a participating store, to alert customers that they might want to take a closer look.

After that, comes regional expansion for Ebizu. “We will be using part of this fund to deliver on the ongoing conversations with customers in Malaysia as well in ASEAN capital cities, particularly Jakarta, Bangkok, and Manila,” Maheswaran says. “We will also look to fill immediate and near-future employment opportunities in several fields such as sales and marketing, technology development, operations, and customer service among others.”

Beacons using Ebizu’s service are already in place or are currently being installed in five malls in Malaysia’s Klang Valley, one mall in East Malaysia, and six malls in Indonesia. “We already have several hundred merchants delivering location-based push notification promotions via our platform and we are seeing positive growth in the number of engagements. As we move on to sign up more apps on to our Beacon network, we foresee incremental growth in usage numbers,” Maheswaran says.

Shaking up shopping

The Malaysian startup will be facing some competition in the proximity marketing space in Southeast Asia, however, as rival services such as Indonesia’s Cubeacon and Singapore-based Beacon-In utilize similar technology, but based on Apple’s iBeacon devices (Ebizu has opted for a “flexible, platform agnostic” solution). “The competitive landscape includes app developers who build a single app,” Maheswaran points out. “Our end to end retail solution is a part of a large ecosystem in the making – an essential differentiator.”

Ebizu sees potential in getting app developers onto its network, providing ideas and solutions while Ebizu provides the infrastructure, the know-how and its network of retail outlets. “The completeness of our retail portfolio is yet another differentiator,” Maheswaran says.

At the moment, Ebizu is working exclusively with malls, as they are highly receptive to technology and the number of retail app users is very high, according to Maheswaran. However, the company wants to expand to other spaces, like airports, hospitals, hotels, and office buildings. “We have received positive feedback on the conversion rate we have seen so far in both Malaysia and Indonesia,” Maheswaran states.

Update on 18/5: The post has been amended to reflect the nature of the funding round concerned.