SleekFlow bags USD 8M in Series A funding led by Tiger Global

Following a 7-figure pre-Series A funding round last year, SleekFlow is delighted to announce the completion of a USD 8 million Series A funding round. The financing is led by top-tier New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Partners (Tiger) whose notable investments include Facebook, Bytedance, UiPath, Toast, and Databricks, followed by Transcend Capital and AEF Greater Bay Area Fund managed by Gobi Partners GBA. SleekFlow is honored to be Tiger’s second investment in a Hong Kong SaaS startup after their investment in another unicorn in April last year. Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund (AEF) also participated in our pre-series A round back in 2021.

SleekFlow's team

The fresh injection of funds from the Series A round will empower our strategic market penetration in Southeast Asia, specifically in Singapore and Malaysia, while further extending Asia’s success to the UK and Europe, as well as other emerging markets. We will also use this investment on continued product development within fintech and analytics to uncover blooming trends in the one-click checkout process on popular social media platforms across all dimensions, such as centralized product listing, easy in-chat payments, and more.

Being an omnichannel social messaging platform and serving over 5,000 businesses globally, including Sandro, Maje, Bossini, Lalamove Hong Kong, and PSB Academy in Singapore, we are all equipped and ready to lead the growing market for social commerce by deeply investing in more fintech products, including checkout and campaign automation for Instagram shops, TikTok, and live-streaming.

By enhancing the social buying journey holistically through upgrades of the existing e-commerce integration, inventory management system, and booking system, our all-in-one social commerce platform will be reinforced to enable more sales-accelerating marketing collaborations and seamless customer support through centralizing business communications across multiple channels. 

Our unified platform integrates over 2,500 tools and messaging channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram chat, SMS, and Telegram, by utilizing the smart routing and targeted automation campaigns to help businesses track and retain potential sales leads from both online and offline avenues. With the newly launched payment feature, businesses can now get paid in chat directly, developing a complete conversion funnel on social for boosting revenue and profits. 

“People nowadays spend more than 80% of their time on social platforms. It’s already a habit for us to discover products and even buy on social channels directly. The huge social commerce market potential is expected to rise to 3.37 trillion by 2028, so we are excited that SleekFlow is part of this e-commerce revolution. Other than our market expansion to the UK, EU, and other thriving social commerce markets, the new fund injection will be invested in advanced product development including detailed buyer journey tracking and analytics which provide invaluable actionable insights for enterprises. With the trust we gained from Tiger Global Partners, Transcend Capital, and AEF Greater Bay Area Fund, SleekFlow strives to be the top social commerce unified hub, merging conversations, product catalog, payment solutions, and order management for businesses to unlock their social commerce power and embrace this unstoppable megatrend,” said Henson Tsai, Founder & CEO of SleekFlow. 

Chibo Tang, Managing Partner of Gobi Partners GBA, said, “Despite the economic downturn, the social commerce market is going stronger than ever, reaching USD 474 billion in 2021. 8 in 10 US businesses anticipate selling on social media within the next three years according to Statista. SleekFlow’s innovative solutions will help these global commerce businesses meet the evolving needs of customers, who are turning to social channels to purchase more than ever before.” 

New one-click checkout for a comprehensive social order-to-payment ecosystem

Businesses around the world are holding on to the pillars of social commerce. The number of social commerce buyers, just in the US itself, almost reached 80 million back in 2020. Subsequent to the relentless growth, a frictionless chat-to-checkout experience has emerged as a prominent factor in driving more sales and conversions from various sales channels. 

In seizing opportunities from the sizable increase in social commerce today, we have developed a comprehensive social order-to-payment ecosystem on the platform to allow owners of both e-commerce and offline stores to generate payment links in chats. With 2.14 billion digital consumers worldwide, this advanced chat-and-pay feature will undoubtedly help the business community adapt to the global shift towards social commerce, connecting businesses and consumers with a fast, easy, and secured path to purchase. 

Future plans

Adopting a customer-centric approach, 80% of our features are derived from customer feedback. Other than payments, we will be introducing new features on Instagram and Facebook to automate and simplify customer interactions in the comments section. In the near future, our product roadmap will also venture beyond the existing chat dimension on social media, having our creativity stretched to the non-messaging part of social. Businesses will soon be able to gain access to calling and emailing functions on the platform, as well as other integration and exclusive features on the popular social media platform including TikTok and other live streaming platforms.

Thus far, our key features have seen 42% more qualifying leads and two times the customer conversion rate for businesses across industries. From a founding team of 3, we now take pride in our expanded team of 60 across regions including the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong serving over 5,000 customers globally across industries. Our brand has seen a valuation growth of 1200% in the last 12 months and a 500% revenue growth. We look forward to scaling the business internationally, from countries across SEA and Europe.