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The platform for discovery of online merchants is looking to scale in Thailand before expanding in Southeast Asia
Thai startup Stylhunt has raised a pre-Series A round of close to US$500,000 led by Japan-based CyberAgent Ventures.
The round saw participation from 500TukTuks, Expara Ventures, Singapore Angel Network, and angel investor Paul Pattarapon Sinlapajan, a best-selling author and TV personality in Thailand.
“Based on more than 500 user interviews, we know that greater than 70 per cent of online shoppers in Thailand shop exclusively through social media,” said Surawat Promyotin, Co-founder and CEO of Stylhunt. “For these shoppers, the two greatest pain-points are trust and discovery – trust because they must typically pay before receiving their products, and discovery because they have great difficulty finding relevant products and merchants when using traditional search engines.”
Stylhunt claims to address these issues through its mobile app by aggregating and sorting merchants based on their social media footprint in terms of likes and followers, which are treated as signs of the level of trust that consumers put in these merchants.
The startup will use the funds from the pre-Series A round to recruit for positions in software development, community management and business development. It is looking to scale operations in Thailand before raising a Series A round to expand into other Southeast Asian markets.
Also Read: Help merchants be more easily discovered by millions of online shoppers
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