Blue Sky VC participates in US$65 million Series B round for Thailand's aCommerce

Blue Sky Venture Capital has upped its stake in Thailand-based aCommerce, a company helping brands set up ecommerce platforms in Southeast Asia, participating in the company’s US$65 million Series B round.

The round, led by Emerald Media with participation from MDI Ventures, the VC arm of Telkom Indonesia, and Swiss market expansion services group DKSH, will go towards further development of the company’s tech platform, scaling its strategic partnerships, and facilitating client expansion into new markets. It comes after the company raised a US$10 million Series A round last year.

Paul Srivorakul, cofounder of aCommerce, said, the investors will provide the company with capital and critical connections in content and demand generation across Southeast Asia.

“We can provide our clients an even better level of transparency and accountability hard to find elsewhere,” he said.

Founded in 2013 and operating across Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, aCommerce provides solutions across each step of the ecommerce chain, from webstore development to marketing, fulfillment and supply chain, customer care, shipping, and ecommerce strategy.

The company has over 250 clients on board, among them Samsung, Unilever, Nestle, and L’Oreal.

“At the beginning of the region’s adoption of online, it was enough to simply have a website. Fast forward a few years later and brands are realizing in order to stay ahead of the retail game, they need to be omnipresent and data hungry to fully control all pricing and consumer touch points,” Srivorakul said.

Paul Aiello, managing director and cofounder of Emerald Media, said the firm’s confidence is aCommerce’s tech platform, which enables clients to simply plug in and play.  

“This provides new entrants a quick way to roll out multi-channel operations in these exciting markets without building large local operations,” he said.

aCommerce is the latest Southeast Asian startup to receive funding from an Australian VC firm.

Blue Sky itself invested into Singapore ecommerce platform Shopback earlier this month, while Right Click Capital participated in a US$3.1 million Series A round for Singapore cybersecurity startup Horangi.

Square Peg Capital also led a US$7 million ($9.1 million) raise for Malaysia-based on-demand services startup Kaodim Group, along with Shanghai’s SIG Asia Investments.

Paul Bassat, cofounder of Square Peg, told DealStreetAsia last month that the firm is likely to keep looking to Southeast Asia, though unlike its tendency towards Series A-stage deals in Australia, it will skew towards Series B or later stage investments in the region.

Image: Paul Srivorakul. Source: aCommerce.