Tag: theAsianparent

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The Parentinc raises $22M led by East Ventures for its parenting community and D2C brand

Roshni Mahtani Cheung, group CEO and founder of The Parentinc

Roshni Mahtani Cheung, group CEO and founder of The Parentinc

The Parentinc, a Singapore-based startup that runs a parenting community and direct-to-consumer product line, announced today it has raised $22 million.

The round was led by East Ventures with undisclosed investors and included participation from Central Retail Corporation, a new backer, and returning investor WHG Holdings. Part of the round was venture debt financing from DBS.

The Parentinc, formerly called Tickled Media, is best known for theAsianparent, its parenting community, and also runs Mama’s Choice, which manufactures and sells halal pregnancy, nursing and baby care products. TechCrunch last covered the company in 2019 when it raised its Series C.

Along with its headquarters in Singapore, the company also has offices in Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai. The company originated as a blog by founder and CEO Roshni Mahtani Cheung.

“It all started because there wasn’t ample parenting information that Asian parents can relate to. Questions like, ‘Is it safe to feed a three year old durian?’ just weren’t covered in books and websites,” Mahtani Cheung told TechCrunch.

The funding news comes a few weeks after The Parentinc said that it had added LINE Southeast Asia as a shareholder. Other strategic investors in the company include JD.com and SCB 10X, which has helped build Mama’s Choice presence in Indonesia and Thailand.

The new capital will be used to expand theAsianparent and Mama’s Choice into three new markets before the end of 2022, including Vietnam and a U.S. launch by the end of this year.

In a prepared statement, East Ventures co-founder and managing partner Willson Cuaca said, “We are impressed by The Parentinc’s incredible growth and successful transition from blog to becoming the unparalleled market leader across Southeast Asia in the parenting content, community and commerce space.”

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Online community theAsianparent raises Series C to add e-commerce and expand into new markets

TheAsianparent, Southeast Asia’s largest online community and content platform for mothers with 23.5 million monthly active users, announced today that it has raised a Series C led by Fosun Group, the Chinese conglomerate. The amount was undisclosed, but a person familiar with the deal says it was between $10 million to $30 million. E-commerce giant JD.com also participated, along with ATM Capital, 14th Street Global Ventures and returning investors Global Grand and WHG Capital.

The new funding will be used on theAsianparent’s new e-commerce business and its expansion into new markets in Asia and Africa, focusing first on Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Roshni Mahtani, the founder and CEO of Tickled Media, theAsianparent’s publisher, tells TechCrunch it looks for countries with high birth rates but relatively few online resources and communities for new parents. The site will have its own branding for African markets and launch first in Nigeria with localized content and a social network.

TheAsianparent, which currently has a team of 180 people across 12 countries and is headquartered in Singapore, will focus on building its e-commerce business in Asia markets first, specifically Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, with JD.com providing advice on things like logistics. TheAsianparent will start selling products through its site and launch its own direct-to-consumer brand later this year.

“The way I see it is that for media companies to be relevant, you need to have content, community and commerce, so that it becomes very easy for consumers to trust you for content and community, and also be able to buy products that you recommend and that have been created for their communities,” says Mahtani, who launched theAsianparent as a parenting blog in 2009.

TheAsianparent’s mobile app, which includes articles, community features and baby development trackers, launched in September 2018, has been installed 1.5 million times so far. Mahtani says the theAsianparent had a traffic growth rate of about 70 percent before funding and expects it to increase by a much faster rate now. It is expected to make $10 million in revenue this year and reach $100 million within the next five years.

In a prepared statement, Wilson Jin, the chairman of Fosun RZ Capital, said “TheAsianparent, as the largest maternal and child community in Southeast Asia, has won the trust of young mothers in Southeast Asia and has a huge commercial space. In the past few years, theAsianparent has fully verified its business development and product evolution capabilities , it is an outstanding entrepreneurial team.”