Today we receive news that e-commerce group, Bukalapak, just closed their series A round of funding from Japanese investment company GREE Ventures. No financing details disclosed by both GREE Ventures and Bukalapak.
A few months after being incubated by Batavia Incubator, the e-commerce company launched Hijup.com, a sister site focusing on moslem female fashion. Recently, they also launched another e-commerce site with fashion niche for a more general audience called Scallope.com. Achmad Zaky, Bukalapak’s CEO decided to escalate the brand “Bukalapak” as the holding company overseeing all three e-commerce sites: Bukalapak.com, Hijup.com and Scallope.com.
It is still to be determined whether anyone from GREE Ventures will join Bukalapak’s board position but Kuan Hsu, a principal at GREE Ventures will be “closely involved” in Bukalapak’s operations in general. When asked about why Bukalapak is interesting from them, “It’s the platform and of course the great team” Kuan Hsu said to DailySocial. But Takeshi Ebihara, their previous investors will remain in the board seat.
Back in 2011, Bukalapak announced that they’re partnering with Batavia Incubator, another Japanese tech incubation company. Founded as a joint venture between Rebright Partners, Japanese incubator and Corfina Group, Indonesian Financial Group, Batavia Incubator is ready to start activity as internet/mobile service focused incubator in Indonesia. Rebright Partners’ CEO Takeshi Ebihara joined BukaLapak’s board seat.
As for GREE Ventures, this will be their second investment in Indonesia’s tech scene after they c0-invest together with another Japanese company, So-net to a local price comparison company, Price Area. It seems that even though their parent company, GREE, is focusing on gaming, GREE Ventures’ activity in Indonesia revolves around e-commerce and the business around it.
Oh, and to finish with a shameless plug, Tatsuo Tsutsumi, a partner with GREE Ventures will be joining Sparxup 2012 as one of the panel speaker to talk about international expansion to emerging tech markets, specifically Indonesia.