Lapasar secures US$500K in seed funding

• Round is led by SeedPlus, alongside angel investors from Nexea
• Platform has a database of over 10,000 suppliers from all over Malaysia

TENDERIN Sdn Bhd, the developer of Lapasar, an emerging B2B procurement platform on July 11 announced that it has recently secured a new round of capital investment totaling US$500,000 (RM2,078,250) to accelerate its growth.

The latest investment round was led by SeedPlus, a Singapore-based venture capital firm which invested alongside angel investors from Nexea, a Kuala Lumpur-based Angel-VC investment firm.

The latest funding will be used to support product development to further automate ordering and Request for Quotation (RFQ) processes as well as to support business development activities.

Lapasar is a marketplace that connects corporations to suppliers of products and services across Malaysia. It is on a mission to make corporate procurement simple, efficient and transparent.

Lapasar founder and chief executive officer Thinesh Kumar (pic), said, “In the past twelve months, Lapasar has been experiencing an impressive transaction growth of over 20 times. Currently, our platform already has a database of over 10,000 suppliers of products and services from all over Malaysia.

“These responses give us confidence to accelerate our growth further. We are certainly grateful to have esteemed investors including SeedPlus who back us in this journey.”

SeedPlus  partner Tiang Lim Foo, said, "As companies become more proactive in optimising and managing their supply chains, we expect the sector to grow strongly in the next five to 10 years across Malaysia and the wider Southeast Asia region.

“One of the core tenets that enables growth is greater efficiency and transparency for B2B and enterprise workflows. We think that Thinesh and his team at Lapasar have created a unique platform positioned to leverage growth tailwinds.

“Most importantly, we have been blown away by their learning agility and laser focus on customers, which were evident during our interactions with the team while they were part of Project Alpha, our pre-seed startup catalyst program organised in conjunction with Amazon Web Services."

“Corporations used to spend days before they could place an order for a product but with Lapasar, that task can now be accomplished within a few minutes-- making efficiency an essential part of their corporate culture,” Thinesh explained. 

Lapasar’s corporate clients include Malaysia Airports Holding Bhd (MAHB), Telekom Malaysia, and Tenaga Nasional Bhd.

According to Frost and Sullivan in its report entitled, US B2B eCommerce Platform Market, Forecast to 2023 on Sept 26, 2017, “Global business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce sales are predicted to reach over US$6.6 trillion (RM27 trillion) by 2020, surpassing business-to-consumer (B2C) valued at US$3.2 trillion (RM13 trillion) by 2020.”

“In Malaysia, to accelerate e-ommerce growth, government interventions such as accelerating seller onboarding and adoption of e-procurement have been key focus areas. We hope to work closer with government initiatives to support this with Lapasar,” concluded Thinesh.