Crowd influencer firm Partipost bags US$3.5m funding, assigns 20% for APAC marketing efforts

Crowd influencer marketing and commerce platform Partipost has secured an investment of US$3.5 million in a Series A round funding to expand its business into Malaysia, Vietnam, and Philippines, as well as strengthen current operations in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan. The round was led by SPH Ventures with participation from Quest Ventures and other investors. In a statement to Marketing, Jonathan Eg (pictured centre), founder and CEO of Partipost said about 20% of the funds collected would be used for marketing across all markets. He added that its expansion into the three new markets were driven by the high growth rate and adoption rate in terms of people using social media.

The team currently has over 70 employees across the give countries, with Hillary Tam leading the marketing team as marketing manager.  Among the list of clients it works with include adidas, Arnott’s, Kellogg’s, Red Bull, Chope, Gojek, Nando’s, Shopback, Qoo10, Zalora, Origins, Burger King, Dutch Lady, Nescafe, Ultra Milk and FamilyMart. 

Partipost aims to focus its marketing efforts to raise brand awareness in the new markets, specifically on mainly strategic partnerships with several big brands and agencies as well as renowned influencers to raise awareness once it officially launches. Additionally, it is also looking to run its own Partipost influencer campaigns to promote the company by activating over 1,000 influencers in each market, Eg said. He added that the latest funding round would enable it to develop even better technology and collect more data. This will help the company achieve its goals of enabling brands to connect with the right crowd of influencers and empower the influencers with ability to be rewarded. 

Since the launch of the Partipost mobile app in 2018, the startup has seen an average of double to triple digit percentage growth month-on-month to more than 200,000 influencers. Eg added that out of the 200,000 influencers, 75% were from Indonesia, 15% from Singapore and the remaining 10% from Taiwan. Through this influencer base, Partipost saw through 2,500 influencer marketing campaigns for over 850 brands across geographical markets in the past 12 months. According to the press statement, Partipost is set to hit over 1,000,000 influencers within the next 18 months.

Chua Boon Ping, CEO of SPH Ventures said social influencer marketing was one of the fastest growing segments within digital marketing, which was why the company was excited to lead Partipost’s Series A round to further accelerate its growth. “We are impressed by Partipost’s strong traction in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan as a young startup and look forward to partnering it to scale to new markets,” Chua added.

Jeffrey Seah, partner of Quest Ventures, said Partipost’s potential resided in its ease of onboarding quality content influencers with loyal follower bases. According to him, Partipost would be able to onboard and scale the follower bases for celebrities, news anchors, society spokespersons and literary writers, to create vertical unlimited-volume content channels that were not restricted by appointment-viewing or location-need consumption restrictions imposed by traditional physical media platforms.

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