The Upmesh team
Upmesh, a Singapore-based startup providing e-commerce functionality for live commerce merchants on social media, has closed a US$3 million seed financing round led by Indian VC firm Leo Capital.
Beenext, Prasetia Dwidharma Ventures, and iSeed SEA, besides Chinmay Chauhan and Abhinay Pedisetty (founders of BukuWarung), Royston Tay and Kwok Yang Bin (co-founders of Zopim), and Jonathan Barki (GoTo Financial, also participated.
Founded in 2020 by Wong Zi Yang, Soh Jan, Nhat Vu, and Shawn Teow, Upmesh helps sellers automate capturing orders and collecting payments when selling physical goods on Facebook Live.
The foursome came together in early last year to build live streaming interaction tools on top of the Twitch API. But during their research into live streaming in Southeast Asia, they discovered various challenges plaguing live seller merchants, such as collating orders with pen and paper.
Seeing an opportunity here, the foursome set out to create a regional platform with the depth of localisation necessary to suit each country’s live selling culture and expectations.
Also Read: Is Southeast Asia ready to give birth to interactive e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo?
In the current form, Upmesh combines the respective strengths of e-commerce platforms and social media platforms to introduce community and discovery into a previously intent-driven online shopping experience.
How Upmesh works
The company provides merchants with a web app and dashboard. Merchants log in via Facebook and grant the web app permissions to access their Facebook page.
With these permissions, the web app can capture comments and tag them to the inventory items that the merchants have uploaded. Upmesh then uses Facebook Messenger to send a checkout link to the customers from the merchant’s Facebook page. Customers then click the checkout link to complete the checkout process and make payments.
The company has onboarded nearly 300 merchants in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines since its launch. It claims it currently processes almost US$40 million in annualised GMV.
“Enabling e-commerce functionality in live commerce is just the first step. Moving forward, we are working tirelessly to make Upmesh become the best place for communities around live selling to gather and share great products in a transparent format,” says CEO Wong Zi Yang. “Driven by a regional appetite for live streaming and the normalisation of e-commerce, the potential waiting to be unlocked by the evolution of e-commerce into a social, community-driven form in Southeast Asia is limitless. We are barely scratching the surface.”
Live commerce has in recent months gained prominence in markets all over the world as consumers turn to social media to discover, buy, and sell items.
In China alone, an estimated US$140 billion is transacted annually via live commerce, making up approximately 15 per cent of all online retail. Whatnot, an American live commerce platform funded by a16z and Y Combinator, in September 2021 closed a US$150 million Series C.
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Image Credit: Upmesh
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