X
Business

Singapore's Clozette comes out with $3M Series B

Singapore-based fashion social network secures another US$3 million in Series B funding, beefing up its current total to US$6.06 million, which it plans to use to expand across Southeast Asia.
Written by Victoria Ho, Contributor

Singapore-based startup Clozette has just closed a Series B funding with US$3 million, raising its current total funding to US$6.06 million. The round was led by Phillip Private Equity, and brought back previous investor, Seed Ventures IV. 

Clozette
Clozette has 300,000 members across Southeast Asia.

The startup has 300,000 members across the Southeast Asian region, and racks up monthly pageviews of 8 million, it said. Clozette is a fashion portal that collates about 3,500 brands from various retailers such as Burberry and Club 21 under its site. Its differentiating service is its social media element, where it aims to let users discover new items to wear from other users' public pinboards. 

The site was launched in 2010 and raised its Series A funding of US$1.9 million in May 2012, after a seed round in April 2011. Over the past two years, it has built partnerships with Rakuten in Japan and SingTel's inSing.com in Singapore, as well as a joint site called Glam Southeast Asia with Glam Media.

Roger Yuen, Clozette's founder and CEO, said the company intends to use its new funds to hire and expand across the Southeast Asian region.

Khoo Teng Up, investment director with Phillip Private Equity, said the startup was attractive to the firm because the amount of sales driven by social sites is projected to hit US$30 billion annually in 2015, according to Gartner figures. That translates to half of all Web sales occurring through social media, the research firm said.

Phillip PE doesn't seem to have made many publicly-known investments in tech startups here. According to reports, it pumped US$15 million into Singaporean biotech startup, Inviragen, in October 2009.

Repeat investor, Seed Ventures IV, has a pool of S$20 million (US$16.01 million), run by Walden International. Its funds come from the Singapore National Research Foundation's Early Stage Venture Funding program.

Editorial standards