Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures and Singapore-based East Ventures today announced that they are closing a round of funding for a new e-commerce site that focuses on baby and kids products called Bilna. And if you know the people behind the new e-commerce company, then you will come to no surprise on why those two big investment firms decided to back them up.
Bilna is founded by Ferry Tenka, Eka Himawan and Jason Lamuda. Sounds familiar? Well, Ferry Tenka and Jason Lamuda is the founder of Disdus.com, a daily deals site sold to Groupon not long before their shipwreck IPO in the US. The founders are still pretty much in the tech business, and became an angel investor for a fashion e-commerce site called BerryBenka which sounds eerily similar to “Ferry Tenka”. Oh well.
In a company statement, Cyber Agent Ventures said that “due to economic growth, increase of personal income earnings and the growing population of Indonesia, we believe there is high demand of online shopping for babies and children related goods”, which leads them to decide that they’re going to back Bilna. Bilna is currently CAV’s second investment in Indonesia after closed a $700k investment on another e-commerce company Tokopedia back in 2011.
With their motto “It’s Baby Shopping Time”, Bilna aims to be an e-commerce company that focuses on customer service and experience. Their website is available through desktop, mobile phones and also tablet computers. The site itself just soft-launched on November 26th and begin to do online campaigns to attract modern parents who is looking to avoid going out of the house to buy baby and kids products.
No further details about the financial side of the investment, but it’s clear that with some serious rock star founders and huge investment firms backing them up, Bilna should be a new upcoming player to be considered by competitors in the crowded space.
