Indonesian startup Snapcart bags $3M in Pre-Series A round

Indonesian startup Snapcart has raised $3 million Pre-Series A round. The new funding round was led by Vickers Venture Partners, Wavemaker Partners and SPH Media Fund, along with participation from a consortium of market research professional angel investors. Launched in September 2015, Snapcart collects shopping data by giving a small cashback (as much as 5 per cent) to customers for taking photographs of their receipts and submitting it on their app. In this way, they collect a massive amount of purchase data, analyze and offer to brands on a real time basis with shopper rich information. The crowdsourced data is in turn is used by brands to better understand users’ shopping habits, and drive key marketing decisions. The company plans to use this fresh inflow of capital to grow its OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tech, machine learning and data sciences technology. It also aims to up its hiring spree to expand its sales team.

Reynazran Royono, Founder and CEO, Snapcart revealed to a leading publication that Snapcart is disrupting the way market research is traditionally done, especially in the brick-and-mortar stores which contribute over 95 per cent of total grocery sales.

In January 2016, the startup landed $1.7 million in funding from Wavemakers Partners, SPH Media Fund, SMDV (Sinar Mas Digital Ventures), and Ardent Capital. What stands out is the quick popularity of this app. Within two weeks of its launch, Snapcart had claimed that its mobile app was downloaded by more than 10,000 users. And now, its sports a total user base of about 1 million on Google Play. Currently, Snapcart operates in two countries, Indonesia and Philippines and has collaborated with over 75 brands. The company has opened a business development office in Singapore, where it plans to drive its focus largely along with client acquisition.