Source: YourStory

Raena, a startup that enables micro beauty entrepreneurs, said it will use the funding to grow its team from 15 to 100 over the next three months. 19 CLAPS +0 +0 Singapore-based startup Raena has announced it has raised $9 million Series A funding.

The round was led by Alpha Wave Incubation and Alpha JWC Ventures, and also saw participation from AC Ventures and existing investors - Beenos, Strive, and Beenext.

Raena said it will use the funding to grow its team from 15 to 100 members over the next three months. It aims to enable more entrepreneurs and partner with more beauty and health brands across the world to help them enter Indonesia, and eventually South East Asia and the GCC/MENA regions. 

The startup identifies, sources, and aggregates products directly from brands/local manufacturers, and then sells them to micro-entrepreneurs online along with a full stack tech platform. 

“We realised the problem was two-fold - brands are keen to enter emerging markets such as Indonesia but there are limited distribution partners. On the other hand, platforms such as Shopee, Instagram, and WhatsApp have made it easy to sell to end consumers, but the backend supply chain has not kept up with the needs of these micro-entrepreneurs,” said Guo Xing Lim, Co-founder, Raena.