Aucfan, the only company in Japan that provides all the e-commerce price data across the big three markets of US, China and Japan has invested alongside early-stage venture firm 500 Startups and Gree Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of internet company Gree, in Bukalapak, a C2C e-commerce site servicing the Indonesia market.
Bukalapak will use the new funds to further enhance its marketplace platform by streamlining user experience in online transactions, enhancing its payment system, and provide an e-wallet system called BukaDompet. The team also plans to launch its local mobile application later this year, according to news reports.
The investment marks Aucfan’s first foray into the Indonesia market. Chief Executive Officer Shuichi Takenaga has expressed in the media that he is impressed by Indonesia’s attractive e-commerce potential.
The latest investment into Bukalapak is obviously strategic in some fashion in that it gives Aucfan direct access to one of Asia’s biggest growing e-commerce markets and valuable pricing data.
Bukalapak is run by just 20 employees. The site now facilitates over IDR 500m ($42,000) in daily transactions, not counting the transactions between direct buyers and sellers. Bukalapak currently has 400,000 live item listings from more than 80,000 sellers in its platform. Bukalapak also has a very strong following among individual and hobbyist sellers. Competing websites for Bukalapak include Rocket Internet-backed Lamido and eBay’s Blanja.
A TechinAsia news report quoted 500 Startups’ Khailee Ng as saying, “What their team has achieved in such a short amount of time speaks volumes about what they can achieve in coming years. We’re always looking for tomorrow’s global champions and we see this in Bukalapak.”
Ng founded and sold GroupsMore (acquired by Groupon) and SAYS.com (merged with Catcha Group).
Details of the current and previous funding rounds have yet to become public information. The business did raise a series A round of funding in 2012 from Gree Ventures, which was a follow-up round to its Batavia incubator-backed seed round in 2011.