Singapore, December 9, 2021 - Upmesh, the leading live commerce enabler and community building platform in Southeast Asia, today announced a new round of Pre-Series A funding of USD7.5m. This also coincides with Upmesh’s launch of the world’s first Instagram Live selling app to help merchants build community and manage orders real-time.

Since its initial seed round, Upmesh has nearly doubled its online merchants in less than three months and has further expanded into Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

“Today we are glad to join forces with Monk’s Hill Ventures in our mission to transform eCommerce,” says. “We are united in our shared belief that community is the next frontier for eCommerce, and live commerce is the ideal medium for bringing community and commerce together,” Wong Zi Yang, CEO and Cofounder at Upmesh.

This new round of funding will be used to expand Upmesh’s regional presence in Southeast Asia and launch new products including a mobile version of its product. Upmesh also plans to launch more backend automation features including logistics automation.

Since launching in 2020, the platform has onboarded hundreds of live commerce merchants in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, providing backend support for live commerce. The platform provides e-commerce functions for merchants and leverages the power of community through the following:

1. Sellers go live on social media platforms such as Facebook Live/Instagram Live
2. Upmesh captures orders through a merchant’s livestream comments and incentives the buyers to share through discovery, giveaways, messaging
3. Sellers are now equipped to reach their full potential through multi-channel discovery and sharing to unlock value and create virality

Upmesh also goes beyond just basic automation to being a sales tool to help merchants grow sales through its analytics to identify best selling items and patterns in buying behaviour as well as buyer loyalty programmes.

Ranging from mom-and-pop street shops selling on live streams to supplement foot traffic to specialised Live Commerce sellers moving thousands of SKUs a month, Upmesh is enabling trusted voices to be discovered by buyers.

“Live commerce is transforming eCommerce and shaping the buying behavior of the digital consumer in Southeast Asia. While UpMesh provides a full technology and service stack to enable live commerce, it is even more critical that the company is enabling small and medium online sellers at scale. Small and medium sellers form the fastest growing segment in eCommerce and their needs are largely unmet. UpMesh is focused on meeting their needs,” said Kuo-Yi Lim, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Monk's Hill Ventures.

Other investors from previous rounds include Leo Capital, Beenext, iSeed, Prasetia Dwidharma, Royston Tay, Kwok Yangbin and Abhinay Pedisetty as well as Chinmay Chauhan (founders of Bukuwarung).