iStore iSend has announced that it has raised US$5.5 million in a round co-led by regional venture capital firm, Gobi Partners, and logistics player, EasyParcel.
The funds will be used by the company to scale existing markets and to expand to new countries.
“The full-stack services that iStore iSend offers its clients as well as the full integration of its system into the most popular e-commerce sites is a real opportunity for investors that should not be overlooked,” said Thomas G. Tsao, Chairman and Founding Partner of Gobi. “With the spike in online shopping brought about by last year’s pandemic, more e-commerce players will want to grow the market by enhancing the efficiency and movement of their SKUs; iStore iSend is in a strong position to help with those efforts.”
Gobi’s co-investor for this deal is logistics company, EasyParcel. Based in Penang, the company launched in 2014 and is a longtime player in the logistics and e-commerce industries, having helped more than 700,000 micro SMEs.
Speaking on its investment in iStore iSend, Clarence Leong, Founder and CEO of EasyParcel said, “Having been on the receiving end of fundraising, it’s gratifying to come full circle and invest in a company whose business is increasingly becoming the backbone of the e-commerce industry. iStore iSend has grown remarkably since its inception.
As the e-commerce landscape in Malaysia continues to grow against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, they are providing timely and innovative solutions. This strategic investment adds value to EasyParcel’s customers as they can seamlessly unlock iStore iSend’s fulfillment solutions and e-enabler services. Investing into iStore iSend strengthens our ‘Delivery Made Easy’ tagline and what is offered to the end user isn’t only last-mile deliveries, but warehousing and pick-and-pack services too.”
“We are looking forward to being able to offer our services to even more e-commerce players in the region,” said Joe Khoo, co-founder of iStore iSend.
“At iStore iSend, we believe that we are unique because we have two strong areas of business: inventory turnover, because we can leverage on existing data to predict demand and purchase, which in turn leads to a higher turnover rate; and high SKUs fulfillment — industries like fashion normally have high stock keeping units (SKUs) which makes inventory management very difficult.
With our technology and operational expertise, fashion companies can efficiently manage the pick, pack, and dispatch, and return of fashion items.” With the announcement of this investment, Tommy Yong, co-founder of iStore iSend said, “This investment comes at a great time, especially during this trying period, where going online is a requirement by most businesses in order to survive. iStore iSend will be able to offer e-commerce supply chain digitization to help even more businesses transition into e-commerce.”
While iStore iSend currently has operations in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, it is hoping to utilise a portion of this round to expand to the fast-developing and underserved markets of the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam; another amount will also be spent on the further acquisition of online-to-offline (O2O) clients in existing markets.
