Buyandship, a global cross-border e-commerce platform headquartered in Hong Kong, has made the first close of its Series B round with a US$10 million strategic investment led by Cool Japan Fund.
The company will use the capital to automate operations and R&D in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities, as well as to expand into Southeast Asia.
“From a geographical expansion perspective, Buyandship looks forward to widening its coverage within Southeast Asia and South Korea, benefiting even more consumers in the region,” said Sheldon Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Buyandship.
Buyandship aims to offer consumers a “simple and intuitive e-commerce experience” to purchase products globally. Over the past 12 months, it has built an automated shopping assistant, utilising a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) model to boost its order processing capacity.
Also Read: The thesis for cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia
In the future, an AI-powered recommendation system will be integrated into the Buyaholic social commerce platform. This system will utilise an algorithm to feed user-generated content (UGC) automatically based on behavioural records to enhance user stickiness and engagement.
The company claims to have processed US$383 million in GMV in the last fiscal year.
Kenichi Kawasaki, President, CEO and COO of Cool Japan Fund, said, “This investment will encourage overseas consumers to purchase local Japanese e-commerce products that do not support overseas shipping, and will help raise the profile of Japanese products among overseas users, while expanding sales opportunities.”
Cool Japan Fund was founded in November 2013 as a public-private fund backed by the Japanese government to contribute to the sustainable growth of Japan’s economy through the expansion of overseas demand and supply of attractive products and services unique to Japanese lifestyle and culture.
The global B2C e-commerce market was valued at an estimated US$4.92 trillion, representing 19.6 per cent of all commerce being conducted electronically in 2021. By 2025, these numbers are projected to increase to US$7.39 trillion and 24.5 per cent, respectively. Included within these statistics is the segment of cross-border e-commerce, which is predicted to grow from US$780 billion in 2019 to US$4.82 trillion in 2026.
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Image Credit: Buyandship.
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