Online B2B wholesale platform, Peeba, has secured US$4.2 million in seed funding to help Asian retailers thrive amid pandemic-induced pressure. The funding round was led by Headline Ventures. Hong Kong-based Peeba will use the funds to deepen its localization efforts across 11 APAC countries, as well as to further build out the machine learning technologies underlying its platform.
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Founded in 2020, Peeba is a fast-growing online B2B wholesale marketplace that provides independent retailers across Asia access to a curated catalog of unique brands, reduced inventory risk, higher operational efficiency, and lower costs. The company has already onboarded 25,000 retail users (10x growth in the last year), and 1,500 unique brands (3x growth in the last year), with over 100,000 products currently listed on the platform.
With the closing of its seed funding round, Peeba’s next steps are to use the funds to deepen localization. The company is expanding its local offices and ramping up hiring to improve local language support across 11 APAC countries and regions, including Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. In addition, Peeba is continuing to improve the platform’s underlying tech, which includes automated credit checks and credit risk analysis, and its machine learning-driven recommendations engine.
“Our mission is to transform how independent retailers discover and connect with unique brands, and bring Asia’s B2B wholesale retail supply chain into the modern era in the process. Peeba’s major value-add is how we reduce inventory risk for retailers, through our 60-day returns policy and “sell first, pay later” model. That allows retailers to quickly adjust to post-pandemic realities with greater confidence,” said Jacky Lai, CEO of Peeba.
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“Peeba is bringing about the next stage of global retail innovation. The platform brings both emerging and traditional brands to the world of local retail in Asia. We are excited to become Peeba’s partner to help expand their reach into more markets in Asia,” said Akio Tanaka, partner & co-founder at Headline VC.