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Taiwan’s iKala grabs $US 5M to boost video ecommerce in Southeast Asia!

Steve Peng - iKala's Business Development Director
Steve Peng – iKala’s Business Development Director

Taipei, Feb. 12, 2018 – iKala, a leader in providing advanced video marketing solutions to enterprises and branded customers, announced today that is has completed USD 5 million series A funding, backed by Singapore-listed Hotung Venture Capital, Pacific Venture Partners, and ACE Capital as strategic investors. Funds will be used to expand services in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

If video ecommerce usage is quite clear in China and Taiwan, there is just a growing trend of using live stream video to sell products in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. This time iKala will use the fresh funding to fuel their market expansion to ASEAN countries. Let’s have a quick chat with Steve Peng – iKala’s Business Development Director to know more about their video ecommerce’s “weapon”!

Is there any proven models for iKala to follow? or a successful case study of iKala in Taiwan 
We provide different pricing package for event-based use or monthly subscription.

The all-in-one service that covers from front-end content design to post-production, broadcasting and marketing activities, while the other is to modularize the well-developed streaming technology and sell it to corporates, namely, streaming as a service.

Successful case study 
Nowadays, most of the e-commerce websites encounter this situation and solution :
#Situation: Facing the challenge by various kinds of E-commerce platform competitors.
#Solution: Internet celebrity is popular on Youtube and Facebook live-streaming. EC platform upgrading the live-streaming feature, can interact with customer to increase revenue.
Yahoo! Auction integrates live streaming with its auction system. The seller can stream with from Yahoo! Auction app and the buyer can buy products directly from within the app while watching the live show. The result was better than expected. A week after its launch, the total number of viewers surpassed 500 million. In just one hour, the seller generated almost 10 times the revenue than the week before without live streaming. The business model of “e-commerce + live” has become not just a new way of marketing, but a cornerstone for next-generation online shopping.
How is iKala’s different from FB Live and Youtube?
We embrace FB Live and Youtube live as our partner!
StraaS Sync - Stream To Multiple Platforms Simultaneously!
Support all the RTMP server. StraaS Sync enables you to externally publish your content to third-party sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitch.
Our customer should multiply their impact! If they manage multi-platforms like Facebook fan page and Youtube channel, using StraaS sync will make you reach all your audience!
What kind of partners are you looking for in SEA? 
  • Ecommerce website partners
  • Deal site partners
  • Digital marketing agencies
  • Logistics partners
  • Payments partners
  • Merchant/supplier


FULL PRESS RELEASE

With the vision to be a “video business enabler” and recognized by Google as a Cloud Premier Partner, iKala is focused on providing full-stack video marketing solutions. iKala owns a professional live production team “LIVEhouse” and has produced more than 1,200 large-scale live shows with advanced analytics, covering eCommerce, eSports, gaming, and branded customers. iKala’s platform as a service (PaaS) product “StraaS” meanwhile provides high-scalability and interactive streaming technology together with artificial intelligence to enable customized applications for enterprise customers in Japan, Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia. Together, LIVEhouse and StraaS form a strong value proposition that empowers customers’ video businesses.

“People are using videos to communicate, and we have years of experience and expertise. It is our goal to make it effective, efficient, and measurable,” said iKala CEO Sega Cheng, “2017 was a year of good harvest. We saw strong revenue growth of more than 300%.” iKala now comprises a team of 80 people, continuing its efforts to provide more advanced video services and products. “We are hiring another 40 to 50 people this year to expand in Taiwan and Southeast Asia”, said Sega.

“We are very optimistic about iKala. In addition to solid financial performance, the team has always been very focused on its core business of video marketing, and has built up a team of talented people and a great culture.” To Por-Yuan Wang, Chairman of Pacific Venture Partners and Jennifer Huang, Chairman of Hotung Venture Capital, iKala’s discipline and executive ability were key to their decision to invest. “ACE Capital has strong reach in Southeast Asia. We are helping iKala build business partnerships there”, said Jason Chang, Partner of ACE Capital.

iKala will target emerging video markets, especially eCommerce in Southeast Asia, and will soon launch new products to extend their core services. With 70% of the population under 35, Southeast Asia has 140% mobile phone penetration. Live broadcasting, social networking and eCommerce are among the most active in the world. “The area is extremely energetic. We expect to see even faster growth in the coming years in this market of 650 million people. We are actively looking for business partners in the region”, Sega said. “Everyone is welcome to join us riding this unprecedented wave.”

About iKala
Founded in 2011, iKala provides advanced video marketing technologies and cloud services. The founding members are from Google, Yahoo!, HTC, MediaTek, and Microsoft. iKala ensures customers’ success in online video business with its full-stack video marketing services, including content marketing service “LIVEhouse”, video marketing technology platform “StraaS”, and “cloud infrastructure”. iKala is a Google Cloud Premier Partner.

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