Sequoia’s Surge leads $2m injection into ecommerce marketing firm Epsilo

Epsilo, an end-to-end ecommerce marketing startup based in both Singapore and Vietnam, has raised US$2 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge.

The startup is part of the fourth cohort of the accelerator’s bi-annual scale-up program for startups in Southeast Asia and India.

Epsilo founders (from left) Quang Tran and Hang Pham / Photo credit: Epsilo

Launched in July 2019, Epsilo is a performance marketing platform built on top of ecommerce platforms.

With major ecommerce players such as Lazada, Shopee, and Tokopedia launching advertising solutions on their sites, many brands have started to shift some of their ad budgets away from Google and Facebook onto these ecommerce platforms, Epsilo said.

However, the advertising tools provided by them are still nascent and they require significant human capital to operate, the company added.

“Ninety-seven percent of digital ad dollars are spent on ads that don’t drive a direct revenue return, and the shift of shopping on mega ecommerce platforms and the opening up of ad inventory on those marketplaces have created a new opportunity for performance marketers,” claimed Epsilo co-founder Quang Tran.

With its solutions, Epsilo aims to enable brands and merchants to optimize their ad spend for keywords, budget, and inventory in order to sell goods at scale and maximize revenue.

The software-as-a-service firm claims that it has supported more than 400 online shops that collectively generate over US$280 million of annualized gross merchandising value. It has worked with over 200 customer brands such as Procter and Gamble, Unilever, L’Oreal, and Reckitt Benckiser.

It is present in seven markets across Asia Pacific, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan.