Snapcart Raises Additional Funds To Provide Offline Commerce Data In Southeast Asia

Snapcart, a startup helping to provide data regarding offline commerce in Southeast Asia, has raised $3 million in pre-Series A funding.

According to TechCrunch, the company raised $1.7 million in early 2016, and this new funding should push it towards a Series A round before the end of this year.

Snapcart gathers shopper and purchase data by giving customers cash-back rewards if they upload their shopping receipts into its app. That information is then turned used to provide consumer insight and reports for its client base of more than 75 brands, which includes L’Oreal, Nestle and Unilever.

Southeast Asia has over 600 million consumers and a growing middle-class population, making it a popular eCommerce region for companies like Alibaba and Amazon, both of which have been making moves in the area. But offline retailers are scattered and hard to track, which is where Snapcart comes in.

“It’s a black hole, and brands don’t know what is happening,” said Reynazran Royono, Snapcart CEO and founder.

Snapcart has recently expanded from its launch market of Indonesia into the Philippines, where it keeps its artificial intelligence and data analysis team. And while Snapcart continues to expand into other regions, with Thailand likely to be the next destination, there are no plans to go global anytime soon.

“Southeast Asia is going be our domain for now, [but] demand is there whenever we talk to clients,” Royono said. “Latin America and Africa is where they feel there’s a gap in consumer data. But it is complicated to think about those markets right now.”