Singapore-based ecommerce marketing startup raises $1m to enter Indonesia

Photo credit: viniwidivici snapshot.

Email and digital marketing startup Ematic Solutions has raised a pre-series A round of close to US$1 million, it announced today. The funding comes from MDI Ventures, a venture capital fund backed by Telkom Indonesia, the country’s major telco.

The pre-series A round comes just two months after Ematic raised its seed round, worth US$1.07 million, led by Wavemaker Partners and joined by 500 Startups and Convergence Ventures.

The funding will be used to intensify the Singapore-based startup’s quest for regional expansion. Indonesia was already a priority destination for the company, and it expects MDI’s support to help it further along. It has just opened an office in Jakarta, its first outside of Singapore, and is currently recruiting there.

(Update, 26/2: This story has been updated with comments by Paul Tenney, Ematic founder and CEO.)

Photo credit: Ematic Solutions

“We saw a great opportunity to bring on a strategic investor that will significantly enhance our efforts to reach and work with retail and ecommerce companies in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia,” Ematic founder and CEO Paul Tenney tells Tech in Asia.

While the funding extends the startup’s current runway, Paul says it will go forward with a series A later in 2016, “to support faster, larger growth and product initiatives.”

Ematic’s products include HiIQ, a tool that figures out when is the best time to reach out to which customer, and ByeIQ, a method for encouraging engagement when a user is about to leave your website.

Jakarta bound

Indonesia is a particularly attractive market for Ematic given its mammoth market size and ecommerce potential. The numbers are well known; a population of 250 million, the largest in Southeast Asia, with a recent annual GDP increase of five to six percent. A 65.6 percent growth for retail ecommerce in 2015, according to eMarketer. 73 million internet users – the highest number in Southeast Asia.

Image credit: Ematic Solutions

“We are seeing a massive growth in Indonesia’s ecommerce market right now, which presents many emerging opportunities,” Paul says. “We have well-developed market insights and created our technology solutions to meet the Indonesian and other ASEAN markets.”