Connect with us

Asia Startups

Thailand-Based Beauty Platform Konvy Raises $22M Series B to Expand Across Southeast Asia

The round, led by Cool Japan Fund, will support regional expansion and strengthen the platform’s Japanese beauty brand ecosystem.

Published

on

Southeast Asian beauty and personal care platform Konvy has raised $22 million in a Series B funding round led by Japan’s government-backed Cool Japan Fund Inc., as the company accelerates its regional expansion strategy and deepens its position in the fast-growing beauty commerce market across Southeast Asia.

Existing investor Insignia Ventures Partners also participated in the round, alongside continued backing from earlier investors.

Founded in 2011, Konvy has emerged as one of Thailand’s largest beauty-focused commerce platforms, offering more than 20,000 products from over 1,000 beauty and personal care brands. The company operates through a hybrid retail model spanning e-commerce, marketplaces, social commerce, and physical stores.

The latest investment comes as beauty retail across Southeast Asia increasingly shifts toward omnichannel shopping experiences, where online platforms, creator-led commerce, livestream selling, and offline retail are becoming deeply interconnected.

Regional Expansion Beyond Thailand

Konvy plans to use the fresh capital to expand across Southeast Asia, with particular focus on markets including the Philippines and Malaysia.

The company is also investing in the growth of its private label portfolio as it seeks to strengthen margins and build long-term consumer loyalty.

Over the past several years, Konvy has steadily expanded its retail footprint beyond traditional e-commerce. In addition to its own platform, the company sells through Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop, and physical retail partnerships, including collaborations with chains such as Watsons.

Its offline network currently includes 16 stores in Thailand and one location in the Philippines.

CEO Qinggui Huang described the Series B round as a major milestone in the company’s regional growth journey, saying Konvy is now focused on extending its market leadership beyond Thailand and building a broader Southeast Asian beauty platform.

Get Featured

Cool Japan Fund Backs Japanese Beauty Distribution

The involvement of Cool Japan Fund carries strategic significance beyond capital.

The Japanese investment firm, which supports the overseas expansion of Japanese culture, lifestyle, and consumer brands, invested $15 million in the round as part of a broader effort to strengthen the international presence of Japanese beauty and healthcare products.

The partnership positions Konvy as a regional gateway for Japanese beauty brands seeking stronger distribution and localization capabilities in Southeast Asia, where Korean and domestic beauty labels continue to intensify competition.

Konvy has previously collaborated with Japanese organizations through initiatives such as the JETRO-backed Japan Mall Project, which promoted Japanese products across regional digital commerce channels.

For Japanese brands, Southeast Asia represents an increasingly important growth market driven by rising middle-class spending, strong mobile commerce adoption, and growing consumer demand for premium beauty products.

Omnichannel Commerce Shapes the Beauty Market

Konvy’s expansion strategy reflects broader shifts reshaping beauty retail across the region.

Consumers are increasingly discovering products through creators, short-form video, livestream shopping, and social commerce platforms rather than through traditional retail channels alone.

The company has positioned itself as both a commerce platform and a distribution infrastructure partner for international brands entering Southeast Asia.

Its localized model combines logistics, digital marketing, retail execution, and marketplace distribution, allowing beauty brands to scale regionally without building local operations independently.

Konvy has already completed several earlier funding rounds to support this strategy. In 2024, the company raised $11 million in a Series A extension backed by New Day Ventures Limited, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, and Insignia Ventures Partners. It previously secured another $10 million Series A round in 2022.

With fresh Series B funding and strategic backing from Cool Japan Fund, Konvy is now aiming to strengthen its position as one of Southeast Asia’s leading beauty commerce platforms.

Subscribe to the Arab Founders Newsletter

The best entrepreneurship & investment stories from the Arab world — weekly, straight to your inbox

No ads. No fluff. No spam — we value your time.

Asia Startups

Indian FinTech Startup 72 Street Raises $450K to Expand Investment Research Across Futures, Commodities, and Mutual Funds

The Mumbai startup will broaden its AI-assisted research into derivatives, model portfolios, commodities and mutual funds.

Published

on

Mumbai-based investment research platform 72 Street has raised approximately $423,000 from angel investors and ultra-high-net-worth individuals to expand its product range beyond equity research. The conversion reflects the exchange rate reported on September 3, 2026

The company plans to enter futures and options, model portfolios, commodities and mutual funds while developing Venty, its artificial intelligence-powered market research tool. It is also seeking registration as a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser, which would allow it to offer personalised investment advice directly to individual clients.

Get Featured

Combining AI With Analyst Oversight

Incorporated in late 2025, 72 Street was founded by CEO Rohit Agarwal and CTO Fal Ghancha. The company operates as a SEBI-registered research analyst under registration number INH000029722.

Its platform combines regulated investment research with AI-supported market analysis, targeting retail investors who may have access to large volumes of financial information but lack the time or technical knowledge to interpret it.

Venty scans more than 3,800 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. The tool assesses stocks using fundamental, technical and sentiment indicators while identifying chart patterns and candlestick formations.

According to the company, Venty can produce an initial assessment of a stock in less than 20 seconds and translate complex market information into more accessible, jargon-free language. However, 72 Street said its SEBI-registered analysts review every insight generated by the tool before publication.

Ghancha said the company developed the 72 Street app to give retail investors a single, trusted platform for their investment research. He added that Venty can identify patterns across fundamental, technical and sentiment data that would take a human analyst hours to find manually.

Experienced Founders Target Retail Investors

Agarwal brings more than 20 years of investor advisory experience to the company, having previously worked with Bajaj Allianz, HDFC Life and Reliance Capital.

Ghancha previously served as head of technology and chief information security officer at JioBlackRock Asset Management Company. He also held the position of chief information security officer at DSP Mutual Fund.

Agarwal said retail investors now have access to more market information than ever, but interpreting that information remains difficult. He said 72 Street aims to make investment research transparent and understandable, with analysts reviewing findings before they reach users.

The combination of automated analysis and human oversight is central to the startup’s positioning. Rather than presenting Venty as a replacement for registered analysts, 72 Street is using AI to accelerate market screening and simplify the resulting information.

Expanding Into New Investment Categories

The platform currently concentrates on equity research but intends to extend Venty’s capabilities across additional asset classes and investment products.

Its planned move into futures and options, commodities, mutual funds and model portfolios would broaden the platform’s relevance to investors seeking research beyond individual stocks. The funding will support that expansion as the company develops new products and builds on its existing analytical infrastructure.

Securing investment adviser registration would represent another important step. While its current research analyst status allows 72 Street to publish investment research, the additional registration would enable one-to-one advisory services tailored to individual investors.

With its new capital, 72 Street is seeking to build a broader research destination that pairs the speed of AI with the accountability of regulated human review.

Subscribe to the Arab Founders Newsletter

The best entrepreneurship & investment stories from the Arab world — weekly, straight to your inbox

No ads. No fluff. No spam — we value your time.

Continue Reading

Asia Startups

India-Based HealthTech Startup DocPharma Raises $2M to Scale 30-Minute Medicine Delivery Infrastructure

The Equentis-led round will help DocPharma expand its prescription-compliant supply chain for healthcare platforms and providers.

Published

on

Indian healthcare infrastructure startup DocPharma has raised $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Equentis, as it looks to make rapid medicine delivery available to healthcare businesses without requiring them to build their own fulfilment networks.

Existing investor 100Unicorns participated in the round alongside Vinners and a consortium of strategic angel investors.

DocPharma does not operate as a consumer-facing e-pharmacy. Instead, it provides the underlying technology, licensed dark stores and prescription-compliant fulfilment processes that allow other businesses to offer healthcare deliveries within 30 minutes.

Get Featured

Infrastructure for Rapid Healthcare Delivery

DocPharma serves e-pharmacies, health insurers, corporate wellness providers, hospitals, wellness and nutraceutical brands, and pet care companies.

These businesses can connect to its infrastructure and offer faster delivery without investing in their own warehouse network, inventory systems or prescription-verification operations.

The company’s licensed dark stores stock more than 40,000 products each. Its model attempts to solve an inventory challenge that distinguishes medicine delivery from conventional quick commerce, where a comparatively narrow selection of frequently purchased products can be distributed through hyperlocal facilities.

DocPharma co-founder Saquib Ali said quick-commerce platforms have conditioned Indian consumers to expect rapid delivery across most product categories, but medicine remains an exception. He argued that inventory represents the main obstacle because the healthcare category contains around 300,000 products, far beyond the few thousand items typically stocked by an individual pharmacy.

Ali said DocPharma addresses that constraint by combining larger inventories with an AI-driven system overseen by pharmacists and compliance teams. The goal, he added, is to bring quick-commerce speed to medicine delivery without compromising regulatory requirements.

DocPharma One Connects the Supply Chain

At the centre of the company’s operation is DocPharma One, an internally developed software platform that combines warehouse management, inventory tracking, order processing and fulfilment.

The system gives customers real-time visibility into available stock and routes each order to the nearest compliant store. It also incorporates prescription verification into the fulfilment process rather than treating compliance as a separate step.

DocPharma co-founder Sagar Chauhan described the platform as the intelligence layer behind the company’s supply chain. He said the startup built every component internally, including its order and warehouse management systems, AI-based inventory forecasting, prescription validation tools and pharmacist checkpoint workflows.

Keeping the technology stack in-house gives DocPharma greater control over how its software interacts with regulated fulfilment processes. It also allows the company to develop workflows specifically for healthcare rather than adapting systems created for general retail.

Compliance Shapes the Operating Model

Healthcare logistics involves requirements that conventional ecommerce platforms do not typically face. Products may carry different storage protocols, regulatory conditions and implications for patients, making speed only one part of the fulfilment equation.

Co-founder Shashank Rai said DocPharma built its compliance operations from the ground up instead of modifying an existing retail model. The team developed the network rule by rule and expanded it one licensed dark store at a time, he added.

The new funding will support DocPharma as it scales this combined infrastructure of software, inventory, licensed facilities and pharmacist-led controls.

Its opportunity lies in becoming the backend for healthcare companies seeking faster delivery without taking on the cost and regulatory complexity of operating a dedicated supply chain. The company’s challenge will be maintaining compliance and inventory availability as it extends the network and handles larger order volumes.

Subscribe to the Arab Founders Newsletter

The best entrepreneurship & investment stories from the Arab world — weekly, straight to your inbox

No ads. No fluff. No spam — we value your time.

Continue Reading

Asia Startups

India-Based Startup Cradlewise Raises $12M to Expand AI-Powered Child Sleep Products Globally

The Series A will support new sales channels, geographic expansion and a broader product roadmap extending beyond infant cribs.

Published

on

Indian consumer health and wellness startup Cradlewise has raised $12 million in Series A funding to expand its AI-powered sleep technology for infants and children.

3one4 Capital and Prudent Investment Management led the round, bringing Cradlewise’s total funding to $26 million. Its other backers include Sean O’Sullivan Ventures, Footwork VC and Charles River Ventures.

The company will use the new capital to enter additional markets, widen its sales channels and invest in product research and development. It is also planning a broader portfolio of sleep products designed to support children beyond the first two years of life.

Get Featured

A Smart Crib That Responds Before the Baby Wakes

Founded in 2019 by Radhika Patil and Bharath Patil, Cradlewise emerged from the founders’ experience of sleepless nights as new parents.

The startup has developed an AI-enabled crib that combines sensing, learning and soothing within a closed-loop system. It monitors a baby’s movement, sounds and sleep state, then attempts to predict when the child may wake and intervene before that happens.

Rather than simply alerting parents after their baby wakes, the crib responds automatically in an effort to extend the child’s sleep. Cradlewise says the system can save parents up to two hours of effort each day.

The company has collected more than 75 million hours of sleep data, which it uses to improve the product’s detection, prediction and personalisation capabilities. Its hardware and sensing systems are protected by patents, according to the startup.

Radhika Patil, co-founder and CEO of Cradlewise, said the founders wanted to create a product that would do more than notify parents that their child was awake. She said the smart crib was designed to help babies sleep better while giving parents practical support, with the new funding enabling the company to reach more families and develop products for later stages of childhood.

Manufacturing and Technology Built in India

Cradlewise manufactures its cribs at an integrated facility in Pune. The company says the site can produce, test and package thousands of units each month, giving it control over several stages of the manufacturing process.

Co-founder and CTO Bharath Patil said Cradlewise’s technology is built around sensing, learning and creating a practical impact. He described the company’s goal as developing technology that works quietly in the background, solving problems without demanding constant attention from users.

He also emphasised that Cradlewise is building the technology and engineering foundation behind its products in India.

The combination of hardware manufacturing, proprietary sensing technology and sleep data gives the startup a more complex operating model than a software-only consumer health company. Scaling will require Cradlewise to increase production while maintaining the reliability of both its physical products and AI systems.

Moving Beyond the Infant Crib

Cradlewise currently focuses on the period from birth to 24 months, but its product roadmap extends into later childhood.

The company is developing software-led sleep routines, additional child sleep hardware and more affordable entry-level products. It is also working on reusable sensing and electronics modules that could shorten the development cycles for future devices.

This strategy would allow Cradlewise to maintain relationships with families after children outgrow the crib, while applying its existing technology to a wider range of sleep challenges.

With $12 million in new funding, Cradlewise is now preparing to scale distribution while evolving from a smart-crib company into a broader child sleep technology platform.

Subscribe to the Arab Founders Newsletter

The best entrepreneurship & investment stories from the Arab world — weekly, straight to your inbox

No ads. No fluff. No spam — we value your time.

Continue Reading

Most popular