- A pair of young Filipino tech wizards raises US$2.2 million seed capital for their startup company, e-commerce shipping platform Shipmates
- The Metro Manila-based company is on a mission to help local e-commerce operators grow their business by making their shipping process easier and faster
- A bevy of private equity and venture capital firms helped the startup raise funds in the Asian and US financial markets
Startup Shipmates has raised US$2.2 million (around P125 million) seed funding, a Philippine-based platform that helps e-commerce businesses grow by making their shipping process easier and faster.
Shipmates chief executive Josh Supan announced the successful fundraising, backed by Y Combinator and Singapore-based venture capital and private equity firm Iterative, in a media release as well as on LinkedIn on September 8.
“Shipmates has raised $2.2M right after going through Y Combinator. I know this is a win but I’m more excited of all the work ahead of us,” Supan said in his LinkedIn blog.
Supan said the seed round was participated in by Cathexis Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Taurus Ventures, Ascend Angels, MyAsia VC, Grant Park Ventures, XA Network, Capital X, Sketchnote Partners, Monks Hill Ventures Scouts, and Buko Ventures.
Shipmates enables online business owners to book on-demand and standard orders using multiple couriers in the Philippines.
Founded in July 2021 by Supan and his chief technology officer, David Marquez, the startup also helps e-commerce businesses compare rates among different couriers.
The company said it plans to scale up its platform to become the preferred shipping tool of merchants in the Philippines and improve the country’s shipping infrastructure by helping both online businesses and shipping companies.
Supan, a web development and web design entrepreneur, got the idea of setting up the company after talking to e-commerce operators.
“While talking to online sellers, I found out their biggest pain point has always been the use of manual shipping in our country. We built Shipmates to automate this, we built Shipmates for them and we are very glad to be joined by our amazing investors in making this vision a reality,” Supan said.
“Instead of shippers booking couriers manually on their phones or physically dropping off packages, they feed orders straight into Shipmates, and they can pick a courier for shipping from there,” he added.
The shipping aggregator later raised $500,000 or ₱25 million in seed funding from Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator.
Shipmates is the second startup formed by young techies to tap the Asian and US financial markets for capital-raising within the span of a month. In August, King Alandy Dy and Jeff Tan, along with their US partner Rui Aguiar, completed Series A fundraising for their San Francisco, California-based startup Expedock, which uses AI to transform documents into data. They raised a total of $17.5 million for their expansion plans.
In 2021, the e-commerce market was the leading contributor to the Philippines’ internet economy with an estimated gross merchandise value of $12 billion – a 132% increase from 2020. This is expected to hit $26 billion by 2025.
