B2B Wholesale Platform Peeba Raises $4.2M to Support Asian Retailers

Online B2B wholesale platform Peeba has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to help retailers in Asia cope with pressure from the pandemic.

The Hong Kong company said in a news release Thursday (April 7) it will use the funds to “deepen its localization efforts across 11 APAC countries, as well as to further build out the machine learning technologies underlying its platform.”

Peeba argues that Asia’s B2B retail wholesale market is “antiquated” and thus had trouble dealing with pandemic lockdowns.

“Currently, most independent Asian retailers rely on trade shows and in-person sales visits to source new brands and products,” the company said. “This approach is slow and arduous, involving significant legwork even without the added complication of COVID-19 interrupting in-person meetings.”

Peeba says it responded with its B2B wholesale online platform, designed to connect brands from around the world with independent retailers across the Asia Pacific region. The company says it has onboarded 25,000 retail users and 1,500 brands, with more than 100,000 products on its platform.

Read more: Trade Finance Provides Lifelines to Asian B2B Marketplaces Hit by Pandemic

The company says it will use the seed money to expand its local office and hire more staff to improve local language support across 11 countries and regions including Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Peeba says it wants to continue improving its platform’s tech, which includes automated credit checks and credit risk analysis, as well as its machine learning-driven recommendations engine.

“Our mission is to transform how independent retailers discover and connect with unique brands, and bring Asia’s B2B wholesale retail supply chain into the modern era in the process,” said Peeba CEO Jacky Lai. “Peeba’s major value-add is how we reduce inventory risk for retailers, through our 60-day returns policy and “sell first, pay later” model. That allows retailers to quickly adjust to post-pandemic realities with greater confidence.”