Social commerce infrastructure provider startup Desty announced an undisclosed seed funding from East Ventures. The fund will be used for product development and boost user acquisition.
Desty was founded in October 2020. It is a digital platform that helps content creators, influencers, and merchants on social media create online destinations to market, sell their products and content.
Desty’s CEO and Founder, Bill Wang explained, Desty was designed in a challenging condition, but he believes that digital acceleration provides opportunities for growth. “Desty is here as a local, simple, and free solution for online businesses to create landing pages and build their own online brand in just minutes,” he said in an official statement, Tuesday (12/1).
East Ventures’ Co-Founder and Managing Partner Willson Cuaca added, the number of online businessmen in Indonesia has grown rapidly since last year because they are shifting to open online stores. He sees that Desty’s team, which combines global and local expertise, is able to create a product that can draw the attention of thousands of users, just a few weeks after being launched.
“We are very pleased to work with Desty in helping millions of online merchants and content creators in Indonesia integrate their businesses across various e-commerce and social media platforms,” Willson added.
Desty has two products, Desty Page and Desty Store. Desty Page is a landing page provider service that is optimized for links on social media accounts, especially Instagram – the concept is similar to Linktree or Oneblink developed by MTARGET. Meanwhile, Desty Store provides a platform to easily open an online store, as a complement to the marketplace.
Despite the early stage, Desty is said to have succeeded in attracting thousands of users, including online brands (Alowalo, Babycare, Notbad), content creators (Mindblowon Studio/Tahilalat), and influencers from the culinary, travel, lifestyle and fashion industries. The company has integrated with several important partners to add payment and logistics features to the Desty Store platform.
“In addition to online merchants, Desty also used by various users to increase engagement with their followers. We also provide our users with the best features, from customizable templates to comprehensive analysis tools.”
Bill said that his team will use this seed funding to accelerate product development and boost user acquisition. He targets Desty to be able to attract 100 thousand users by the first half of next year.
Bill Wang founded Desty with Eric Nathanael. Both have enough experience in local and global companies, from the e-commerce industry to B2B to telecommunications. Bill previously worked for 17 years at Alibaba, he was involved in the journey of the technology giant to evolve into AliExpress.
Social commerce momentum
According to the Econsultancy report with Magento and Hootsuite in October 2019 entitled “The State of Social Commerce in Southeast Asia”, the social commerce industry is projected to grow significantly. Southeast Asia has more than 350 million internet users and 90% of them are connected to smartphones, as a result this opportunity is very promising to work on.
The pie has grown significantly during the pandemic and has been previously covered by DailySocial.
In Indonesia, these players offer a variety of simple technology solutions that make it easier for sellers to enter the digital realm. These players are Woobiz, TapTalk.io, Storie, Super, Chilibeli, Halosis.
In fact, Moka released the GoStore which makes it easy for merchants to create online shop sites. Before investing in Desty, East Ventures also invested in a social commerce startup called KitaBeli last August.
Another player, Kata.ai, a conversational technology platform powered by AI and NLP, released a dedicated social commerce platform and manages a business called QIOS. Through this platform, MSME players can create virtual assistants via WhatsApp to serve inquiries, payments, and deliveries.
This platform is integrated with e-wallets (OVO, DANA, LinkAja), and logistics services (GoSend and GrabExpress). “Kata.ai is an enabler to help players in this industry be more thriving with intelligent technology,” Kata.ai’s CEO Irzan Raditya said.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian
