In addition to onboarding 1 million new influencers, Partipost is also expanding across Southeast Asia
Singapore-based influencer marketing startup Partipost has closed in on an investment of US $3.5 million as an extension of its Series A, the company announced in a statement released today.
Partipost confirmed to Jumpstart that the funding is a follow-on from its Series A round for $2 million that the company had raised in May this year.
The round was led by SPH Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund of Singapore Press Holdings, with participation from Beijing-based venture capital firm Quest Ventures along with other investors, the statement said.
Further, SPH Ventures CEO Chua Boon Ping and Quest Ventures Partner Jeffery Seah will join Partipost’s board as Director and Observer respectively.
A crowd influencer marketing platform, the 2016-founded startup uses a data framework to match brands with the right influencers, and utilizes follower response to measure results.
Seah noted in that statement that Partipost’s key ability was in bringing on “quality content influencers” not restricted to a singular demographic.
Even politicians could be digital influencers as evidenced by the recently held Singapore elections, which followed social distancing, he added, noting that Partipost is in a position to “drive a new era of commercial content monetization partnerships.”
“Besides millennial socialites, we believe Partipost will be able to onboard and scale the follower bases for established celebrities, news anchors, society spokespersons and literary writers,” Seah said.
He added that this will help “create vertical unlimited-volume content channels that are not restricted by appointment-viewing or location-need consumption restrictions imposed by traditional physical media platforms.”
Partipost launched its mobile app in 2018 and has since grown to over 200,000 influencers, and is gearing up to reach one million influencers within the next 18 months, the statement said. The app allows the company to “activate thousands of influencers for a single campaign within 24 hours.”
In the past 12 months, 2500 marketing campaigns were launched on the platform for over 850 global brands, the statement further noted.
The capital will be funneled towards enhancing Partipost’s tech platform, scaling their business in Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, and strengthening its existing presence in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan.
“Our latest fundraising round will enable Partipost to develop even better technology and collect more data to help us achieve our goals of helping brands connect to the right crowd of influencers as well as empowering these influencers with ability to be rewarded,” Partipost Founder and CEO Jonathan Eg said in the statement.
Prior to its Series A rounds, the company raised two successive convertible notes in June 2017 and July 2018 for a total funding of $1.2 million.
The company’s investor base comprises investors with “deep domain knowledge” in the content business, artist management, and advertising, the statement noted, adding that Taiwanese-American celebrity Will Pan is one of its earliest investors.
“Having strategic investors, such as SPH Ventures and Quest Ventures, will provide us with domain expertise and market networks to realize our growth vision faster,” Eg noted in the statement.
The company noted that Partipost has been able to onboard major new clients on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, including Adidas, Arnott’s, Kellogg’s, Red Bull, Chope, and GO-JEK and its payment gateway vertical GO-PAY.
“Social influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing segments within Digital marketing. Hence, we are very excited to lead Partipost’s Series A round to further accelerate its growth,” SPH Ventures CEO Chua Boon Ping said in the statement.
Influencer marketing is indeed growing rapidly. When it comes to marketing, social media is used mainly to research products online, a study by Global Web Index finds. However, about a quarter of users surveyed also use social media to discover products through ads or recommendations.
Moreover, users in the Asia Pacific region spend an average of two hours and 18 minutes on social media daily, on par with the global average, the study further reported.
The influencer marketing segment alone is expected to grow to $9.7 billion this year, with two-thirds of companies surveyed in a report by Influencer MarketingHub and CreatorIQ expected to increase their influencer spend as well.
Header image courtesy of Partipost. Founding Team L-R: Tony Jen, Jonathan Eg, Benyamin Ramil
