Startup Weekend global champ Aftership gets seed funding after DEMO Asia encounter

Aftership, a Hong Kong-based startup that provides package tracking for online retailers and consumers, has secured seed funding from Australian company Business Switch in exchange for a five percent stake.

The size of the investment is undisclosed.

Both companies met at DEMO Asia 2012, a premier startup conference that hosted over 76 startups from 14 countries.

“We met dozens of companies seeking investment from Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo during recent visits to the region and AfterShip was a clear stand out,” said Matthew Abrahams, managing director of Business Switch, which runs a whole host of services catering to entrepreneurs.

“They have a great online product, management team and strategy. We love that AfterShip solves a big post-sale problem for online retailers — managing delivery expectations of customers.”

Using AfterShip, online merchants can check the delivery status of all their customer packages in one place. The software automatically notifies customers via SMS and email at critical junctures during the delivery process.

The funds will be used to improve and scale the current application across more shopping cart platforms as well as build international market share. Currently, the system supports eBay, Amazon, Shopify, Magento, and Spree.

Launched about four months ago, the startup has already sent more than 70,300 delivery notifications to customers and experienced a 42 percent growth week-on-week in notifications sent. They have about 5,500 users (both merchant and customer) a month.

AfterShip was also a winner at the Global Startup Battle 2011 in Seattle, a startup competition involving the various winners of the Startup Weekend events around the world.

The company is founded by Teddy Chan, Andrew Chan, and Dante Tsang.