TradeGecko reels in $650k in funding
By Esther Goh,
TradeGecko.com, a cloud-based inventory and sales management SaaS application for SMEs started by a trio of Kiwis, has closed a massive seed funding round less than three months after launching its public beta.
TradeGecko founders Bradley and Cameron Priest, and Carl Thompson
TradeGecko raised US$650,000 from a group of Singapore-based investors, including WaveMaker Labs (which led the round) and Golden Gate Ventures.
The funding will enable TradeGecko to integrate its system with other SaaS apps like Xero, Shopify and Vend, which are already used by TradeGecko’s SME clients.
The three founders of TradeGecko, Carl Thompson and brothers Cameron and Bradley Priest, moved from New Zealand to Singapore in search of bigger opportunities. They started TradeGecko in January and in May they completed the JFDI business incubator programme there.
It looks as if it's paid off, with their seed round oversubscribed by 60 percent.
Chief executive Cameron Priest says it marks a huge milestone for the company.
"Not only does it give us the resources we need to offer an end to end solution but it also gives us access to the insight, experience and connections of a great group of investors as we roll out worldwide.”
Paul Santos, managing partner at WaveMaker Labs, said: “We are excited to include TradeGecko as part of our portfolio. We see tremendous potential here in Asia-Pacific for business-to-business applications like TradeGecko. The team has the talent and the drive to really make TradeGecko a global success.”
So far TradeGecko has around 200 active trial accounts from 26 different countries. Priest said the software filled a "gaping" hole in the market between enterprise solutions like SAP, Netsuite and SalesForce, and basic spreadsheets.
“We’ve taken complex business processes and applied our user-first design theory to create an application that is beautiful and easy to us," he said in a statement.
“Currently the only options available are feature-bloated, expensive systems that take months, if not years, to install.
“The timing is right. SaaS applications for business are on a very healthy incline and it’s only in the last few years, with the latest development technologies, that complex business systems can be build in a cost effective way.”
Co-founder Thompson said the pain he experienced running a fashion label is what got them started.
“Running my clothing label was exciting and I enjoyed it a lot. But we grew very fast and the amount of administration quickly overwhelmed us. I couldn’t find a solution to pull it all together. Spreadsheets and manual data processing turned into an absolute nightmare," he said.
"We talked to around 200 potential customers before we started coding to make sure we really understood what the market wanted. We used Lean Startup and Agile methods to evolve TradeGecko iteratively."
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