Una Brands, a Singapore-based firm that provides e-commerce business owners (vendors) with a “quick and fair approach” to sell their businesses, has acquired $15 million in Series A funding.
The financing was headed jointly by White Star Capital and Alpha JWC. Ninja Van co-founder Alvin Teo joined the round as well, in addition to the company’s current investors.
This investment comes just five months after 500 Startups, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital, and Global Founders Capital invested $40 million in Una Brands’ initial round.
The fresh funds will be used by Una Businesses to purchase e-commerce brands in the Asia Pacific and to improve its technology and workforce. “With this raise, we will continue to invest in acquiring great brands, developing our multi-channel capabilities, expanding into our newly launched markets and supporting our brands’ growth,” founder and CEO Kiren Tanna said.
Tanna, the former CEO of Rocket Internet Asia and the creator of foodpanda and ZEN Rooms, founded Una Brands in 2020. The startup’s other co-founders are Adrian Johnston, Kushal Patel, Tobias Heusch, and Srinivasan Shridharan.
Tanna, the former CEO of Rocket Internet Asia and the creator of foodpanda and ZEN Rooms, founded Una Brands in 2020. The startup’s other co-founders are Adrian Johnston, Kushal Patel, Tobias Heusch, and Srinivasan Shridharan.
Una Companies purchases brands that sell on Shopify, Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, and Amazon, among other e-commerce platforms. The business focuses on lucrative independent companies with revenues ranging from $1 million to $50 million dollars.
With various deal configurations, Una says it can finish the end-to-end transaction process in under six weeks.
So far, Una Brands has acquired over 15 brands. These brands, which generate between US $1 million to US $15 million revenues, operate in categories of home & living, baby & pets, and personal care. They are based in Singapore, Australia, China, and Taiwan. “We have not disclosed the names of our brands but have made some select announcements, for example, Bellaforte,” Tanna told.
Una Brands undertakes a lot of things once it buys a company to save costs and increase revenue and profitability. It performs performance marketing campaigns and expands the brands into other nations, in particular, on the revenue side. Bellaforte, for example, has begun to extend throughout Europe and sell through new outlets.
Una now employs 90 individuals in seven offices throughout the globe: Singapore, Australia, India, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
“For margin improvement, we leverage our scale to reduce unit costs and explore synergies between brands. For instance, we consolidate our shipment for multiple brands out of China into full container load, thereby massively reducing shipping costs. For any brand, we use all these overtimes to make sure that all engines are fired to manage the brand,” Tanna explained.
Jefrey Joe, the managing partner at Alpha JWC, added, “Digitally native brands in APAC is a secular trend growing at 4x the rate of those in the West. We believe Una Brands’s value proposition will resonate with brands across the region and further propel the growth of D2C in countries such as Indonesia.”
Southeast Asia’s emerging trend is brand aggregation. Rainforest, an e-commerce brand aggregator founded by former Carousell and OVO executives, received a US$36 million startup investment in May of this year. Rainforest raised a $20 million pre-Series A investment headed by Monk’s Hill Ventures in September, which was oversubscribed.
