Could Secretlab be Singapore’s next unicorn?

Every day, 100k+ smart people read our newsletter. You can sign up here.

Hello readers,

Last year, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Singapore and most of the country began working from home, a friend of mine made the decision to buy a Secretlab chair. Her purchase was bright pink, cost about S$600, and has been her steadfast companion through hours of video calls, emails, and other work.

I personally can’t bring myself to spend that kind of money on a chair, but I’m the odd one out. Plenty of stuck-at-home workers have turned to Secretlab chairs to save their spines, and the tremendous growth the company has seen as a result seems to have put it on track toward a billion-dollar valuation.

Today we look at,

• Secretlab’s unicorn potential
• How this restaurant management startup wants to make Indonesia’s food and beverage (F&B) sector more efficient
• Other newsy highlights such as Ant Group’s carbon neutrality goals and Megvii’s IPO plans

PREMIUM SUMMARY

Gaming chairs and growth galore

Singapore-based gaming chair startup Secretlab has had quite the 2020. The pandemic – and remote work – opened it up to a whole new segment of customers outside its usual gaming clientele, as office workers turned to its chairs for their design and comfort while working from home. But it was doing pretty well even before Covid-19 struck.

• Show me the money: Secretlab posted an operating profit of US$33.5 million in the financial year ending 2020. According to our sources, that’s set to jump to an estimated S$70 million (US$52 million) for FYE 2021. And while audits are still underway, the company says that it’s poised to exceed S$350 million (US$260 million) in revenue for that period.
• That’s a lot of chairs: While the company didn’t give out the unit sales figures for FYE 2021, the boom in production has been apparent. In August 2019, Secretlab reported that the company had sold over 200,000 chairs. A year later, co-founder Ian Ang shared that the business produces at least 500,000 units of its gaming chairs a year.
• A billion-dollar startup in the shadows? Secretlab has been one of the fastest at achieving profitability and has posted high revenue growth year on year, but its valuation sits at just S$300 million (US$224 million). Its latest earnings, however, could send its valuation right into unicorn territory.

Read more: Secretlab could be Singapore’s next billion-dollar company

STARTUP SNAPSHOT

Taking restaurant management to the next level

Everything you ever wanted to know about product