Well this one is a doozy. The Next Web reports that Zalora has just raised a round of $100 million from Kinnevik, JP Morgan, Tengelmann, Summit Partners, and Verlinvest. Yeah, $100 million funding round for the fashion shopping site soon after the company announced that it has shipped its one millionth order since its inception in early 2012.
JP Morgan, a strong investor in many of Rocket Internet’s companies, first invested in Zalora in September last year for an undisclosed sum after investing a reported $50 million in Lazada. Back in March, Tengelmann put in €20 million into Zalora as the company was building a software development center in Singapore.
With all this investment, you can’t argue Zalora isn’t committed into building itself as a significant force in e-commerce in Southeast Asia. The $91 million loss in 2012 reported by German publication Manager Magazin seems inconsequential in the face of this year’s series of funding rounds as the company optimistically sees itself turning a profit in 2015 and reaching billion dollar sales.
Zalora managing director Michele Ferario proudly announced the investment in a press release sent to DailySocial. “It is an honor for us to have reputable investors place their investments into a young company such as Zalora. We aim to continue delivering world class products and services so every person in Southeast Asia can benefit from the wide range of products we carry, the comfort of online shopping, and our speedy delivery”.
The substantial investment will go towards expanding Zalora’s collection of 600 brands and 20,000 products available in each of its individual markets, according to the company. Zalora operates in seven countries across Southeast Asia including Brunei Darussalam, The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Zalora’s mobile app which was just launched recently is seen as one of the major driving factors into Zalora’s growth as it delivers announcements of flash deals, discounts, new items, and sale periods, which are expected to push the likelihood of Zalora customers to make purchases. The company notes that more than 25% of its sales today have come from mobile phones.
Of course, the company wouldn’t simply rely on a single mobile application having created a software center in Singapore. In a separate announcement, the company revealed that it is launching another mobile app for Android called FitzMe. As the name suggests, FitzMe would allow Zalora customers to try on the clothes available from the store by taking photos of themselves “wearing” their choice of clothing items provided from within the app, which they can then share to their friends to Facebook and Twitter. Although the company told us that the app is available from Google Play, and even provided a link to it, our search came up empty. Perhaps it will be available soon.
Zalora Indonesia also just announced a new fashion collection from Indonesian singer Alika, which will be available until 15 november 2013. The collection was launched in Cilandak Townsquare in Jakarta earlier today. To celebrate the opening of the store, the first 50 purchases will receive Alika’s latest CD single in addition to a personalized thank you card and a shopping voucher for every purchase at the store.
[Update] Zalora Indonesia managing director Hadi Wenas got back to us to let us know that they are having some unspecified issues with the app on Google Play that they are working to fix. The app should be available as soon as everything is in order.