Social Bella (Sociolla brand) announced series D funding worth of $40 million (over 567 billion Rupiah) led by EV Growth and Temasek. Newcomers in this round are EDBI, Pavilion Capital, and Jungle Ventures.
Funding is to fully focused on recruiting new talents and developing technology, particularly in So.Co. The offline store‘s expansion will continue although the company confirmed no plans to enter the global market.
“Funding was closed last week. There are four new investors and the single investor, EV Growth, was there from the seed and now the co-lead in the series D,” Social Bella’s Co-Founder and CEO, John Rasyid said on Monday (9/2).
Social Bella’s Co-Founder and President, Christopher Madiam added, “Through the strategic partnership with our investors, we are to build a growing beauty-tech ecosystem.”
Last Year, the company announced series C funding worth of $12 million (around 169 billion Rupiah) led by EV Growth, Japan-based beauty platform,, Istyle Inc., and UOB Ventures.
Focus on So.Co development
Social Bella owns three business units, Sociolla (e-commerce), So.Co and Beauty Journal (media), and brand development. Sociolla is the earliest one and the biggest contributor in Social Bella. Nevertheless, they didn’t mention an exact number.
“The whole business runs in parallel, we didn’t put a single fighter. Despite all units, the e-commerce has been established for four years and become our biggest contributor,” he added.
“Therefore, GMV is not our company’s achievement matrix since e-commerce is not our only business line, but we also provide media. It involves different matrix, GMV alone will not make our business unique,” Madiam said.
So.Co becomes the database bank for customers and now the company focused on its development. So.Co stores various kinds of customer’s data, from the profile, transactions, and others to be utilized for a better experience.
The concept might be different because it combines Sociolla and Beauty Journal. It’s not only for consumers who want to shop online at Sociolla but also those interested in reviews and other activities.
Madiam said there will be an additional feature soon to improve customer experience on So.Co. Users will not be limited to end-user, but also brands.
Customers can log in via So.Co before visiting Sociolla offline to help them decide what products to buy based on their skin condition. It’s for their efficiency when shopping at an offline store.
In order to create an ecosystem, the company builds all technologies, including POS machine integrated with So.Co at the offline stores.
“Our warehouse has integrated with technology in order to create an integrated ecosystem.”
He also guaranteed the data collected will not be used for monetization. It will be managed accordingly to improve user experience, therefore, the company will keep all the private data secure.
Based on the monthly unique visitor, John said there are 5 to 7 million and 1,2 million of them are all registered customers. In accumulation, there are 20.2 million visitors joined Social Bella platform since 2018, via Sociolla, So.Co. or Beauty Journal.
Despite all strategies, they expect to increase unique visitors to 100 million by 2021.
–
Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian