Epost, a Sabahan startup that provides end-to-end e-commerce and logistics services, announced today that they’ve closed a US$700,000 seed funding round led by Vynn Capital.
This marks one of the first venture capital investments into the Bornean region, and the first into a Sabah based startup, according to the statement.
Founded in August
2018, Epost has since expanded its operations across Malaysia, China, Singapore,
Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei.
Following news of the
funding, Vulcan Post reached out to its CEO and founder, Tobin Ng, to learn more
about how they got started and have established their presence in multiple
Southeast Asian countries in under 2 years.
It Runs In The Family
Tobin is in the fourth
generation of his family-run logistics business called NCT Group in Malaysia.
When he joined the
family business about 3 years ago, he realised the traditional logistics
business is challenging and that the distribution channel had begun shifting
with the emergence of e-commerce.
Seeing an opportunity
there, he decided to venture into the e-commerce logistics industry with the
establishment of Epost.
With 13 e-fulfilment
warehouses in key locations throughout Southeast Asia, Epost connects businesses
with online and offline distributors, and helps them sell their products to new
customers in overseas markets through its cross-border services.
Over half of Epost’s orders
come from China, and the majority of its users are located in Malaysia, Philippines,
Taiwan, China, and Brunei.
On average, Tobin
shared that they get about 150,000 enquiries on their service.
With this round of financing, Epost plans on enhancing its operations footprint throughout Southeast Asia by first focusing their expansion efforts in Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines for 2020.
“This is because these
countries in recent years have opened up to more foreign startup collaboration,
and due to this, there are more opportunities available,” Tobin explained.
Bettering The
Economic Ecosystem
Epost prides itself on
its ability to bring quality service to its users, and one of the ways they’ve
managed to do so is by cutting down the markup cost of the traditional
logistics model.
For examples, their
air freight charges are per every 0.2kg instead of the traditional 1kg, and for
sea freight, they provide customers with 2 methods of pricing: total cubic
metre, and total weight in kilograms.
While their operations
appear to be picking up and they’ve got a passionate and dedicated team, talent
acquisition remains a challenge.
As this line of
business is rather niche in Sabah, according to Tobin, finding suitable talents
to join Epost is difficult, but they’ve found a workaround.
“We’ve worked closely
with local universities like University Malaysia Sabah to identify potential
fresh graduates and provide them with career opportunities post-graduation,”
Tobin said.
To the team, bringing
on new hires will help the company drive business growth, and they plan to use
the funding to enhance marketing efforts to support customer growth in China
and Southeast Asia as well.
In the press release,
Victor Chua, Managing Partner at Vynn Capital remarked, “The opportunities in
cross-border e-commerce are tremendous. In addition to creating greater
activity between markets, it also enables smaller merchants and individual
consumers to tap into new revenue streams and better service.”
“This fits into our
view that eventually there will be convergence—between markets, industries, and
sectors—leading up to a better ecosystem for each economy in the region.”
He also believes that there will be more quality startups and founders coming out of the Sabah, Sarawak, and Kalimantan region as a new potential business market.
- You can read more about other logistics startups we’ve written on here.
Featured Image Credit: Epost
