In Singapore, India and beyond, capital has been flowing into eCommerce and other online platforms, with an eye on boosting supply chains and streamlining construction projects, among other endeavors.
B2B marketplaces are seeing increased investments, as seen in recent funding activity spanning a variety of verticals, for a total of $18.5 million in venture capital.
Ratelt
As reported by The Business Times, in Singapore, Tin Men Capital, a venture capital firm focused on B2B tech startups, led a $5 million Series A funding round to invest in RateIt.
Ratelt operates as a real-time customer experience management platform, according to reports. Other investors included Wavemaker Partners, Koh Boon Hwee, PropertyGuru Co-Founder Steve Melhuish, and principals from Alto Partners and TPG, reports said.
The platform provides omnichannel microsurveys that help spotlight “real time sentiment analysis” that lets businesses gain actionable insights.
“RateIt’s unique in-the-moment offering is a quick and easy way to listen to customers in a whole new way without the need for long annoying surveys that inevitably end up as long annoying PowerPoint decks,” said Michael Momsen, the company’s founder and CEO in a statement.
The company has expanded from Australia to southeast Asia and clients include Lego, Metro, Pandora and others.
Murli Ravi, co-founder of Tin Men Capital has said that “We see synergies between RateIt and other Tin Men portfolio companies, as well as immediate potential with our firm’s go-to-market partners across Southeast Asia.”
ShopKirana
Separately in India, ShopKirana, an eCommerce platform based in India, raised about $10 million in a funding round through its existing investor Info Edge, according to VCCircle. Info Edge reportedly owns several portals, including Naukri.com, a job site. The funding was disclosed in a stock exchange filing, through which convertible preferred shares could take the firm’s stake in ShopKirana to 25.4 percent upon conversion.
Other investors in the funding round included seed and pre-seed funds Incubate Fund, Better Capital and others. ShopKirana has said that it will use the new funding to expand into more than 30 Tier 2 cities across India. The company’s platform connects retailers and suppliers across groceries and supply chains, among other sectors.
The company was the recipient of a previous funding round of $2 million from Info Edge, according to reports.
Infra.Market
Also in India, a B2B marketplace focused on real estate and construction has raised about $3.5 million for product and revenue expansion.
The firm, Infra.Market, raised the money in seed funding from Accel. Infra.Market told VCCircle that it intends to boost sales to roughly $10 million monthly. The latest announcement follows the disclosure last month the Accel’s India operations had invested in Infra.Market and that the company would expand its presence within India. The company bills itself as a “one-stop source” for construction materials such as ready-mix cement, bringing buyers and sellers together online.
In a statement, Accel partner Prashanth Prakash said the company has positioned itself to gain traction in what is known as the “offline-to-online procurement space” within the construction industry. “Infra.Market aims to revolutionize the age-old construction sector through its full-stack tech-driven approach,” Prakash said, according to VCCircle.
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