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
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.
How is iKala’s different from FB Live and Youtube?
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
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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.