Amazon founder Jeff Bezos participated in a USD 87 million Series B financing in an Indonesian startup, Ula. This marks the first time Bezos invested in any eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia. The Series B financing round was co-led by Proses Ventures, Tencent, and B Capital.
“We launched in 2020, with a single-minded mission to empower small, neighbourhood retailers with technology to increase their income. We take a long-term approach to solve the underlying problems of traditional retailers by investing in technology, supply chain and data-enabled credit offering,” said Nipun Mehra, co-founder and chief executive of Ula, in a statement.
He further added, “Ula’s new investors come with global expertise and share this long-term mindset of the company. We are grateful to them for believing in Ula’s mission and hope to learn from their experience re-imagining retail in other emerging markets.”
Ula was founded last year by Nipun Mehra, Alan Wong, Derry Sakti, and Riky Tenggara. As an eCommerce platform, Ula mainly works with and helps small retailers whenever they face problems in the supply chain, inventory, and working capital. In other words, Ula helps the small business owners restock their inventory whenever they need it, and provides them with working capital. Ula has appointed Pandu Sjahrir as a consultant.
Ever since its inception, Ula has been a hit with a USD 10.5 million seed in finances in June 2020, and another USD 20 million in Series A financing in January this year. Bezos has agreed to invest in Ula using his family office Bezos Expeditions. Moreover, the startup is in the advanced stages of talks to finalize a new round of finance worth over USD 80 million. As of now, Ula is working with more than 70,000 traditional stores and offers over 6,000 products using its resources.
