Dropee announced that it has recently won a grant worth RM500,000 under the program called SUPERB (Skim Permulaan Usahawan Bumiputera) offered by TERAJU (Unit Peneraju Agenda Bumiputera).
The grant is managed by Perbadanan Usahawan Nasional Berhad (PUNB), one of the collaborating agencies in the SUPERB Program. This timely grant coincides with the company’s growth to a commercialisation phase. Started in 2016, Dropee aims to grow the number of SME retailers on its platform from over 300 currently to at least 1,000 by middle of 2018.
Aizat Rahim, chief operating officer of Dropee said, “We are very pleased to have been picked as one of 12 winners of the SUPERB grant. We competed for the same grant last year but were unsuccessful. The failure, however, did not stop us from continuing to try. After new rounds of pitching to convince the judges recently, we have finally succeeded. The SUPERB grant is a testimony of our work towards making a positive impact in the supply chain sector as well as empowering local SME retailers. We are grateful to have TERAJU’s support.”
“SUPERB is primarily designed to assist emerging individuals or companies, nurture and expand their discoveries, ideas, or inventions into successful business models,” said TERAJU senior director for Business and Entrepreneur Development, Megat Mohd Yatim Megat Hamid. “A number of these young entrepreneurs have turned highly successful upscaling their ideas and even entering into the international export markets, carving out a name for their Malaysian home-grown brands.”
Dropee focuses on bringing consumer packaged goods (CPG) on its platform. After a year in operation, it has on-boarded over 200 brands including 100Plus, Anakku, Cadbury, F&N and Red Bull.
In January this year, Dropee secured angel investments of RM300,000 and in March it received a grant of RM150,000 under a program called CIP 150 by Cradle.
As part of its growth plan, Dropee is also currently hiring new talents with priority given to marketing and technology development, to help them build a better online B2B ecosystem for both suppliers and retailers.
“2017 has been a busy year for us. Aside from raising funds, we have also been working hard improving our online system which include a recent launch of the full release of our marketplace. We’ve also introduced a new web interface meant to improve the way retailers can discover products, for suppliers to launch targeted promotional campaigns and for other benefits. We have no plan to slow down going into 2018,” Aizat concluded.
