Indonesia’s Social Bella bags $58m in series E money

Indonesian beauty startup Social Bella announced that it has secured US$58 million in a series E funding round from existing investors Temasek, Pavilion Capital, and Jungle Ventures.

The company will use the new funds to scale up its tech infrastructure and further boost its growth in the beauty and personal care market in Indonesia, which is expected to grow to US$8.5 billion by 2022.

Social Bella co-founders (from left): CEO John Rasjid, chief marketing officer Chrisanti Indiana, and president Christopher Madiam / Photo credit: Social Bella

Founded in 2015, Social Bella has evolved from an ecommerce platform to an online and offline ecosystem. It launched a flagship omnichannel store last year. To date, it has six physical stores across Indonesia.

Apart from its online and offline platform Sociolla, Social Bella also offers an end-to-end distributor service for beauty and personal care manufacturers. It also operates consumer review online platform SOCO as well as beauty and lifestyle online media Beauty Journal, which also provides an online-to-offline marketing service.

The company also recently launched a new business line, Lilla by Sociolla, a beauty and personal care ecommerce service specifically designed for “young and sophisticated mothers.”

See: 7x GMV growth in 1 year: How Indonesian cosmetics e-tailer Sociolla did it

How much traction has it gotten? With all its business units, Social Bella says it’s now serving a total of around 30 million annual users.

What challenges has it faced recently? With the pandemic, the company had to respond quickly to several changes in consumer behavior, such as a surge in online shopping and an increase in consumption of online information, Social Bella co-founder and CEO John Rasjid told Tech in Asia.

During the quarantine period, the startup added a live chat feature so users can directly interact with beauty consultants. As a result, Social Bella claims it has seen an increase in organic traffic and a nearly 50% increase in basket size on Sociolla.

What are its future plans? Moving forward, the company will continue to focus on commerce, content, and community, Rasjid said.

For now, it will spend its fresh capital on strengthening the back-end system for Sociolla and Lilla. It will also ramp up innovation at its Sociolla stores and enhance the user experience for SOCO.

What is its funding history?

• Series D (2019): US$40 million from lead investors EV Growth and Temasek as well as new backers EDBI, Pavilion Capital, and Jungle Ventures
• Series C (2018): US$12 million from lead investors EV Growth, Sinar Mas, and Yahoo Japan, along with Japanese beauty and fashion company Istyle and an unnamed “major institutional investor from Singapore”
• Series B (2017): Undisclosed amount from Istyle and East Ventures
• Series A (2015): A seven-figure amount from Venturra Capital (lead), East Ventures, and Steve Christian of Indonesia’s KapanLagi Network