Singapore-based last-mile delivery service RaRa Delivery has secured $1.2 million in a seed round led by 500 Startups while Vietnamese food recipe portal Cooky has raised an undisclosed amount from Foody founder Dang Hoang Minh. In another deal, Next100 has invested $500,000 in Chatbot Vietnam JSC.
Singapore’s RaRa Delivery secures $1.2m led by 500 Startups
Singapore-based last-mile delivery service RaRa Delivery has secured $1.2 million in a seed round led by 500 Startups, the company said in a statement.
Angel Central, led by its co-founder and partner Der Shing Lim, also participated in the round.
RaRa’s technology does capacity, time slot, distance, and route optimization for thousands of orders in a matter of seconds. Its clients include e-commerce giants Lazada, Shopee and Bukalapak.
The proceeds from the funding will be used to acquire talent in business development, operations, and technology to further expand its business in Indonesia.
RaRa graduated from GK-Plug and Play Indonesia Batch 4 in April last year. GK-Plug and Play was also an investor in RaRa’s angel round.
Other investors who participated in the round were former Zopim CEO Royston Tay, former Zopim CTO Yang Bin Kwok, Unilever digital transformation VP Vishal Gupta and Stripe business development head Vidit Agarwal.
Cooky raises undisclosed sum from Foody’s founder
Cooky, the Vietnamese food recipe portal, said it has raised an undisclosed amount from Dang Hoang Minh, founder of Foody, a gourmet media platform owned by Singapore-based consumer internet group Sea Limited.
The fresh funding will be used to boost its home delivery service Cooky Market, the company said in an announcement.
Cooky, founded in 2015, had earlier raised $500,000 in a funding round led by existing backer ESP Capital.
In 2017, we reported that Sea Limited acquired 82 per cent of Foody Corporation for around $64 million.
Foody, founded in 2012, has become one of the biggest success stories in the Vietnamese startup space. It secured seed and Series A investments from Japanese VC firm Cyberagent Ventures and Pix Vine Capital. Sea was the Series B investor in July 2015, while US-based Tiger Global Management invested in Foody’s Series C round soon after.
Chatbot Vietnam raises $500k from Next100
Next100, a $10-million early-stage-focused fund initiated by Vietnam technology company NextTech Group of Technopreneurs, has invested $500,000 in Chatbot Vietnam JSC, which owns Bot Ban Hang, a platform that connects advertisers and sellers, according to an announcement.
Established in 2017, Chatbot Vietnam JSC is one of the first Vietnam’s chatbot platforms, providing solutions for businesses and online businesses on OTT platforms like Messenger, Zalo, Whatsapp.
The company claims that it has over 10 million users from 5 countries: Vietnam, Taiwan, the United States, South Korea and Japan.
Last December, Next100 invested VND10 billion ($432,000) in PushSale.vn, a digital transformation platform. In July, NextTech Group launched the $10-million early-stage-focused fund Next100 that will function as a venture builder-venture capital hybrid.
