Monk’s Hill Ventures led a US $7.5 million Pre-Series A financing round for Upmesh, a Singapore-based live commerce enabler and community development platform.
The funds will be used to grow the company’s regional footprint in Southeast Asia (SEA) as well as develop new products, including a mobile version of its current offering. It also intends to roll out further backend automation technologies, such as logistics automation.
Upmesh has also released the world’s first Instagram Live selling app to assist merchants to establish a community and handling orders in real-time, in addition to the fundraising round.
“We are united in our shared belief that community is the next frontier for e-commerce, and live commerce is the ideal medium for bringing community and commerce together,” Wong Zi Yang, CEO and Co-Founder, Upmesh.
The platform claims to have onboarded hundreds of live commerce merchants in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines since its inception in 2020.
Its features for retailers include the opportunity to take orders through broadcast remarks from merchants and incentives for customers to share through discovery, prizes, and chat.
Upmesh also functions as a sales tool, assisting businesses in increasing sales using analytics that discover best-selling goods, patterns in purchasing behaviour, and customer loyalty programmes.
Its users range from mom-and-pop street stores supplementing foot traffic with live streaming to specialised live commerce merchants.
In October, Upmesh launched a $3 million seed investment round. In less than three months, the firm has nearly quadrupled its online merchants and expanded into Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, according to the company.
