Online Grocery Store Redmart Raises Series A Round To Stay Put In Singapore

Singaporean online grocery store, Redmart, just raised an undisclosed Series A round that is “in the millions”, according to co-founder and CEO Roger Egan. Together with this funding amount, its previous three seed rounds add up to $4.6 million. Redmart will also raise its next round before the year is up, said Egan. When asked why it plans to do so so soon, rather than wait to close a bigger round this time, he said: “We believe we can increase our valuation a lot in the next six months, so we didn’t want to raise too much right now.” He said Redmart’s tech team just updated its e-commerce platform and warehouse management system, and has rolled out an iPhone app. “We believe these improvements will have a significant impact on our valuation in a bigger round,” he said. Its Series A is likely to be about $3 million, going by reports which have estimated previous funding at $1.29 million. This round was led by Singapore-based gaming firm, Garena. Skype co-founder Toivo Annus participated in two of the seed rounds, and in the Series A said Egan. Previous rounds also included Golden Gate Ventures and East Ventures. Unlike many startups coming out of the island nation, this Series A won’t go towards expanding out of the country to neighbors in Southeast Asia. “I know Singapore is a small market, so most startups want to expand out, first thing. But for fast-moving goods, it’s a $5.2 billion market in Singapore alone,” said Egan. By fast-moving goods, he means groceries and sundries. The two-year-old company just did $5 million in annual sales, and customer retention rates are “high”, with users returning 1.5 times a month on average to make purchases, he said. Redmart stocks about 8,000 products on its site. Users who spend more than $59 (S$75) per basket get shipping free, so it’s likely that each order exceeds that amount. He wouldn’t state how many active users Redmart has, but said it has about 10,000 registered users in its database. Redmart carries commonly-found brands like Nestle and Kellogg’s in its grocery section, as well as Dettol and Fab in household cleaning sundries. Egan said its first big agreement was with Unilever, which owns brands like Dove, Lipton and Ben & Jerry’s. “After Unilever signed up, it was easy to get other brands on board,” he said. Egan plans to use the company’s new

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