Malaysia-based travel tech company Tourplus has secured $1 million in seed funding, while Indonesian logistics startup Andalin has raised a “seven-digit investment” in a pre-Series A round.
Malaysia’s Tourplus bags $1m seed funding
Malaysia-based travel tech company Tourplus has secured a $1 million seed funding round from angel investor Jin Hui Wong, with participation from GT-MAX, SOSV Chinaccelerator, and a few other undisclosed investors, e27 website reported on Thursday.
The proceeds will be used for product enhancement, marketing, and hiring.
Founded in 2014 by Rickson Goh, Tourplus is an online marketplace for travellers to plan tours without needing to worry about security and language barriers. Tourplus helps travellers connect directly to a local guide by booking through its website and mobile app and also allows local guides to earn using their mobile apps.
It had raised RM500,000 ($123,000) in a pre-seed round in 2018 from an undisclosed investor.
Goh said that the company has been focused on product development, raising the number of registered tour guides and strategising on marketing.
In a recent interview, Tourplus’s founder told DealStreetAsia that it will focus on internal tourism for the rest of 2020 and 2021, amid COVID-induced international travel bans. “We are enhancing our business to target domestic travellers, offering location-based travel information through our app that allows them to find places of interest, food, things to do as well as prepare a travel plan (itinerary),” said Goh.
Tourplus’s enhanced app will include a digital directory for merchants to list their shops and products. It will also have an option for travellers to write reviews. “Our investments continue to focus on building technology to capture more local travel data that allow businesses to understand new tourist behaviour,” he added.
Indonesia’s Andalin raises pre-Series A
Indonesian B2B logistics startup Andalin has raised a seven-digit investment in a pre-Series A round led by Singapore-based venture capital firm BEENEXT, e27 website reported on Thursday.
The funding round, which brings the company’s total investment raised to date to $1.5 million, will support the company’s expansion plans in Indonesia.
Founded in 2016, Andalin is a digital freight forwarder that simplifies the complexity of import and export shipments for companies in Indonesia. It provides a seamless digital freight forwarding experience in every aspect of customers’ logistics needs.
BEENEXT was founded by Japanese entrepreneur Sato, previously the chief executive of BEENOS, a Tokyo-listed company, which made investments into a slew of tech companies, including Indonesian unicorn Tokopedia.
In June this year, it announced the close of two new funds with a combined corpus of $160 million. It has raised $110 million for BEENEXT Emerging Asia Fund and another $50 million for a fund focused on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses in Japan.
