StoreHub, a homegrown tech startup that enables restaurants and retailers to automate and grow their businesses, has raised RM60.7 million in a pre-Series B fundraising round led by 500 Global.
Chief executive officer and co-founder Wai Hong Fong said with consumers massively travelling and dining in Malaysia and across the region, retail and food and beverage (F&B) business owners would have to find ways to improve operational efficiency and maximise their revenue per customer.
He said Malaysia has seen businesses transforming themselves to adapt to the new normal, according to Bernama.
Labour shortages as well as more demanding and digitally-savvy consumers have increasingly impacted the industry with restaurants and Mamak eateries especially being hit hard in recent times.
“With this, it has become even more critical for businesses to integrate technology into their operations,” he said in a statement today.
He said StoreHub automated ordering, payments and customer engagement.
It’s like having 10 extra staff members that work 24/7 for you with zero error. Business owners make more money and get more time for their families or to expand even more,” he said.
Meanwhile, 500 Global managing partner Khailee Ng said leading StoreHub’s round is one of the first of many “really big bets” the firm is taking in its top-performing companies.
“We joined their first round in 2016, with a small US$150,000 (US$1=RM4.53) check. Fast forward to today, we have invested more than US$10 million cumulatively on top of that,” he said.
He said the company believed that StoreHub is incredibly valuable because it created incredible value for so many more small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Headquartered in Malaysia and co-founded in 2013 by Wai Hong Fong and Congyu Li, StoreHub started as an early pioneer of cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) point of sales (POS) systems in the region.
Today, the platform powers over 15,000 paying retail and restaurant outlets in Malaysia and across Southeast Asia and has expanded its offering to include quick response (QR)-based table ordering, loyalty, automated customer engagement and more.
In the last 12 months, StoreHub has processed over 128 million transactions worth over RM7.2 billion in gross transaction volume (GTV), a 40 percent increase over the previous year and a sign of the resurgent times.
It has also seen new paying stores coming onto the platform growing by fivefold from the year before with acquisition costs for new customers improving to near break even within the first month.
