Pinkoi, Asia’s Etsy, bags $9M from Sequoia India, GMO Ventures

Taiwan’s Pinkoi, an estore for designers to sell their wares, today announced that it secured US$9 million from Sequoia India and Japan’s GMO Venture Partners.

Unlike Etsy, Pinkoi handpicks products from the designers who apply to sell on its site. The startup says it wanted to avoid counterfeits and poor quality products. That approach also ensured that 90 percent of the designers receive sales through its site. Pinkoi claims to have sold 1.2 million products from across the world in the last four years.

The startup gets orders from Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, and the US. For instance, a customer from the US purchased a cat jenga from a Taiwanese designer; someone from Finland bought a handmade necklace from a Japanese designer.

Pinkoi says it has 25,000 indie designers selling on the platform. Users from over 63 countries have made purchases on Pinkoi. The fresh funding will be used to further expand the designer community within Asia. It will also set up tools to improve discoverability of products.

Pinkoi has a site and app in four languages, including English, Japanese, Thai and simplified and traditional Chinese.

It has set up offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and San Francisco, besides in home city Taipei. It is also putting up an office in Shanghai.

Most of Pinkoi buyers come from Taiwan. But its founding team envisioned Pinkoi as a global company (or at least a pan-Asian Etsy) since inception. Sequoia India’s managing director Shailendra Singh feels that Pinkoi is among an emerging breed of international marketplaces that connect buyers with sellers around the world.

This is Sequoia India’s first deal outside of India. Back home, the fund has led a US$18 million round in a similar startup Craftsvilla. Like Craftsvilla, the funding in Pinkoi will be spent on peaking its presence internationally. It’s not clear if the funding is a prelude to an acquisition or merger. Tech in Asia has contacted Sequoia India. We’ll update the post as soon as we hear from them.