The SOCO platform integrates Sociolla and Beauty Journal to meet the needs of women with a more optimal, relevant and personalised experience
Social Bella Indonesia, the company behind the popular beauty e-commerce platform Sociolla.com, has secured US$40 million in Series D round of investment, co-led by EV Growth and Temasek.
New investors such as Singapore-based EDBI, Pavilion Capital, and Jungle Ventures also joined the round.
The startup will use the funding to strengthen its human resources capabilities, with particular attention on technology-related functions.
“As we believe that technology can be a key driver of Indonesia’s beauty industry, we will invest in the development of our digital assets SOCO. By focusing on user experience, this platform integrates Sociolla and Beauty Journal to meet the needs of women with a more optimal, relevant and personalised experience. This allows us to reach a wider market and accelerate our business further while providing comprehensive beauty services,” said John Rasjid, Co-founder and CEO of Social Bella.
Social Bella has previously closed its Series C funding led by EV Growth, a joint venture fund by East Ventures, SMDV, and Yahoo! Japan Capital. istyle Inc., a publicly-listed beauty-tech company from Japan, and UOB Ventures, also participated in last year’s Series C round.
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Started in 2015, Social Bella is an integrated beauty-tech company. It focuses on developing “a scalable and sustainable” online and offline ecosystem for beauty and personal care.
Over the past few years, Social Bella has evolved from being e-commerce to a beauty ecosystem with three business units — commerce (Sociolla), media (SO.CO and Beauty Journal), and Brand Development (offers end-to-end distributor service for beauty and personal care brands).
Cumulatively, over 20.2 million (unique) visitors joined the Social Bella platforms in 2018, including Sociolla website, SOCO platform, and Beauty Journal, claims the company.
“With this round of funding, we expect to reach more audiences with 100 million (unique) users visiting our integrated ecosystem, SOCO, Sociolla.com and Beauty Journal by 2021,” said Christopher Madiam, Co-founder and President of Social Bella.
In mid-August, Social Bella announced the opening of a physical store at Lippo Mall Puri, West Jakarta.
Like many industries in Indonesia, the beauty-and-personal care industry is growing rapidly. Google’s and Temasek’s e-Conomy report shows that e-commerce has been the most dynamic sector in Southeast Asia’s digital economy over the past three years, and it has grown over 4x since 2015.
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