The growing demand for online and convenience in Asia has been a blessing for grocery concierge and delivery service Honestbee.
The Singapore-based company has raised US$15m in its first funding round, led by Formation 8, a technology investment firm that includes the former CFO of Facebook and Youtube, early investors in Dropbox and co-founder of YouTube.
Honestbee co-founder Isaac Tay said the investments were a tremendous benefit to the e-commerce company.
“We started with a mission to create a highly elastic and trained workforce that would bring invaluable convenience to our customers through our concierge and delivery services,” Tay said. “Most people in Asia are time-starved due to the demands of their job and a large proportion of the population do not possess their own vehicles. With our on-demand delivery service, time-crunched customers can enjoy the widest choices from their favourite stores, even at the last minute, when they shop through Honestbee.”
The concierge grocery delivery service has partnered with leading retailer sin Singapore including NTUC Fairprice as well as boutique and specialty stores GNC and Four Seasons Organic. The partnerships allow traditional retail stores to utilise Honestbee’s online platform to fulfill customers’ orders and deliver them in as little as an hour.
Since opening in Singapore in 2014, Honestbee has expanded into Hong Kong and is expected to be operating in six tier-1 cities in Asia by June next year.
“Formation 8 believes that the hyper-local on-demand marketplays a significant role in the way commerce will evolve. Given the increasing population density across all the key cities in Asia due to job and wealth creation, this is right time and opportunity,” said Formation 8 founder, Brian Koo. “Consumers now demand higher levels of access to convenience. With Honestbee’s superior partnership network and its strong focus on building a world class technology company,they will bewell-positioned toquickly own this market.”
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