Una Brands launches with $40M to roll up brands on

multiple Asia-Pacific e-commerce platforms

techcrunch.com/2021/05/05/una-brands-launches-with-40m-to-acquire-brands-on-multiple-asia-pacific-e-commerce-
platforms/

Catherine Shu @catherineshu / 4 weeks

Una Brands’ co-founders (from left to right): Tobias Heusch, Kiren Tanna and Kushal Patel. Image
Credits: Una Brands

One of the biggest funding trends of the past year is companies that consolidate small e-
commerce brands. Many of the most notable startups in the space, like Thrasio, Berlin
Brands Group and Branded Group, focus on consolidating Amazon Marketplace sellers. But
the e-commerce landscape is more fragmented in the Asia-Pacific region, where sellers use
platforms like Tokopedia, Lazada, Shopee, Rakuten or eBay, depending on where they are.
That is where Una Brands comes in. Co-founder Kiren Tanna, former chief executive officer
of Rocket Internet Asia, said the startup is “platform agnostic,” searching across
marketplaces (and platforms like Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce) for potential
acquisitions.

Una announced today that it has raised a $40 million equity and debt round. Investors
include 500 Startups, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital, Global Founders
Capital and Maximilian Bitner, the former CEO of Lazada who currently holds the same role
at secondhand fashion platform Vestiaire Collective.

E-commerce roll-ups are the next wave of disruption in consumer packaged goods

Una did not disclose the ratio of equity and debt in the round. Like many other e-commerce
aggregators, including Thrasio, Una raised debt financing to buy brands because it is non-
dilutive. The round will also be used to hire aggressively in order to evaluate brands in its
pipeline. Una currently has teams in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia and plans to expand
in Southeast Asia before entering Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Tanna, who also founded Foodpanda and ZEN Rooms, launched Una along with Adrian
Johnston, Kushal Patel, Tobias Heusch and Srinivasan Shridharan. He estimates that there
are more than 10 million third-party sellers spread across different platforms in the Asia-
Pacific.

“Every single seller in Asia is looking at multiple platforms and not just Amazon,” Tanna told
TechCrunch. “We saw a big gap in the market where e-commerce is growing very quickly,
but players in the West are not able to look at every platform, so that is why we decided to
focus on APAC, launch the business there and acquire sellers who are selling on multiple
platforms.”

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Una looks for brands with annual revenue between $300,000 to $20 million and is open to
many categories, as long as they have strong SKUs and low seasonality (for example, it
avoids fast fashion). Its offering prices range from about $600,000 to $3 million.

Tanna said Una will maintain acquisitions as individual brands “because what’s working, we
don’t change it.” How it adds value is by doing things that are difficult for small brands to
execute, especially those run by just one or two people, like expanding into more distribution
channels and countries.

“For example, in Indonesia there are at least five or six important platforms that you should
be on, and many times the sellers aren’t doing that, so that’s something we do,” Tanna
explained. “The second is cross-border in Southeast Asia, which sellers often can’t do
themselves because of regulations around customs, import restrictions and duties. That’s
something our team has experience in and want to bring to all brands.”

Thrasio raises $750M more in equity for its Amazon roll-up play

Amazon FBA roll-up players have the advantage of Amazon Marketplace analytics that allow
them to quickly measure the performance of brands in their pipeline of potential acquisitions.
Since it deals with different marketplaces and platforms, Una works with much more
fragmented sources of data for revenue, costs, rankings and customer reviews. To scale up,
the company is currently building technology to automate its valuation process and will also
have local teams in each of its markets. Despite working with multiple e-commerce
platforms, Tanna said Una is able to complete a deal within five weeks, with an offer usually
happening within two or three days.

In countries where Amazon is the dominant e-commerce player, like the United States, many
entrepreneurs launch FBA brands with the goal of flipping them for a profit within a few
years, a trend that Thrasio and other Amazon roll-up startups are tapping into. But that
concept is less common in Una’s markets, so it offers different team deals to appeal to
potential sellers. Though Una acquires 100% of brands, it also does profit-sharing models
with sellers, so they get a lump sum payment for the majority of their business first, then
collect more money as Una scales up the brand. Tanna said Una usually continues working
with sellers on a consulting basis for about three to six months after a sale.

“Something that Amazon players know very well is that they can find a product, sell it for four
to five years, and then ideally make a multi-million deal exit and build another product or go
on holiday,” said Tanna. “That’s something Asian sellers are not as familiar with, so we see
this as an education phase to explain how the process works, and why it makes sense to sell
to us.”

Target Global leads $150M round for Amazon Marketplace consolidator Branded

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