Pomelo gets $1.6M early stage funding to spread Korean fashion in Southeast Asia

Online fashion retail brand Pomelo has just raised US$1.6 million in pre-series A funding. This takes the total to a not-too-shabby US$2 million in early stage money, which includes investments from the founders.

Singapore venture capital firm Jungle Ventures is leading this new round. Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, 500 Startups, and Fenox Ventures – regular backers of Southeast Asian startups – also participated. Queens Bridge Ventures, which lists rapper Nas a a founder, and an unnamed “major hedge fund” in New York joined as well.

Startups in Southeast Asia typically raise a round in the hundreds of thousands before getting to series A. With more investors starting to take the region seriously, Pomelo’s investment could be a sign of rising valuations for Southeast Asian startups – a breaking of a “sound barrier.”

See more: Top US rap artist Nas and his manager Anthony Saleh to invest in more Asian startups

Launched in Thailand at the beginning of 2014, Pomelo distances itself from many other ecommerce ventures by calling itself a “fast fashion brand first and e-tailer second.” It sells Korean fashion only under its own label, and in the sub-US$100 range.

“We’re much like Zara and H&M in that we try to control as much of the value chain as possible so that we can provide in-trend fashion with keen attention to quality to our customers at surprisingly accessible price points,” says David Jou, co-founder of Pomelo. Several ecommerce companies in the region have echoed this approach, including Lift12, Edit Suits, and Rocket Internet’s Zalora (not coincidentally, ex-Rocket staff are running the first two ventures).

The company disclosed it has 180,000 visitors and just under 1 million pageviews a month. Singapore makes up 15 percent of its orders, and Pomelo expects this to grow exponentially once it ramps up marketing efforts.

Jungle Ventures founding partner Amit Anand calls Pomelo a full-stack startup, which describes companies that try to own the product or service experience instead of just a slice.

Noting that this is Jungle’s first investment in ecommerce, he says: “Pomelo is the first of many brands in Asia that have adopted this full-stack approach which made the likes of Tesla and Uber such big success stories.”

Pomelo launched in Singapore in September and plans to expand to Malaysia by Q1 of 2015.