This trio quit Lazada to build a first-of-its-kind influencer marketing tool in SE Asia

After Alibaba acquired Rocket Internet-born Lazada in a landmark 2016 deal, one of the first orders of business was to test out cross-border trade. So Matthieu Coti, Thibault Couperie Eiffel, and Koussey Goupil – who were Lazada executives at the time – went to the Alibaba campus in Hangzhou with one key objective: to help Chinese brands on Tmall reach Southeast Asian customers.

It was at that point when they discovered the gamut of ecommerce influencer marketing solutions available in China. For instance, Taobao has an internal tool where merchants can hire influencers to promote their products.

“It was much harder for us to find similar solutions in Southeast Asia. It was a fragmented market, with little data and product-driven solutions,” Coti tells Tech in Asia, adding that brands would struggle to even identify influencers.

Matthieu Coti, Thibault Couperie Eiffel, and Koussey Goupil / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Seeing the opportunity, the trio quit Lazada and set up Singapore-headquartered Capssion.

But they didn’t just bring an existing idea into emerging markets, in true Rocket Internet style. They experimented with new business models that would be tailor-made for Southeast Asia.

How it works

On Capssion, beauty and fashion brands can easily tap influencers to post product reviews on social media. In exchange, influencers get to keep the items for free.

“Influencers on Taobao are paid in monetary terms – China is more transactional than Southeast Asia,” Coti points out.

Capssion takes care of everything in the background. It has in-house solutions for storing brands’ stocks and shipping the items to influencers’ doorsteps. It’s essentially an ecommerce platform for influencers.

After a product is shipped, Capssion tabulates influencer posts and monitors how their content performs. That data can be accessed by brands via their Capssion dashboards.

Coti doesn’t see any direct competitors in Southeast Asia yet. “The market is driven by marketing agencies for now,” he says.

Since its August 2018 launch, Capssion has recorded 2,500 active influencers on its platform per month. It caters to two types of brands: big ones and “indie” players, as Coti calls them. Pricing for big clients is tailored and starts at roughly US$2,000 monthly. Smaller brands can buy a package for as low as US$250 monthly.

It has onboarded 40 paying brands across the region. Unilever-owned skincare firm AHC in South Korea and up-and-coming OhMostWanted in Malaysia are among the popular names on its roster.

Coti says Capssion’s burn rate is very low, with the company relying on referrals and media coverage for marketing rather than paid channels. “But I’m not saying we won’t do it. Maybe in a year, we’ll do paid marketing because we want to grow more.”

Professionalizing the sector

Returns for brands

Managing the risks

Funding from Lazada pals