Piktina, an online marketplace for secondhand fashion in Vietnam, announced Tuesday it has raised $1 million in a seed round from Touchstone Partners, a Vietnam-focused venture capital firm.

Piktina said in a statement this investment will help finance the application’s continued growth and enable further refinement of the platform’s business model.

“We’re excited to have Touchstone Partners as our initial investor as they share our values of creating solutions that promote sustainability and making our community a better place to live in. We appreciate the confidence they have in our vision and the guidance they can provide as we scale up Piktina.”, said Nguyen Hoang Phuong, Piktina’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Piktina is a digital merchandise playground that specializes in previously owned fashion items. The firm aims to provide a platform where everyone can refresh their personal style with unique thrifted pieces while also gaining an easy passive income.

The Piktina community connects buyers and sellers so they can free up closets with ease, while doing their part in lengthening fashion trend lifecycles and advocate for a circular economy.

The firm’s mission is to raise awareness of overconsumption and instill sustainability values in the community to reduce fashion waste, carbon emissions, and conserve the environment.

Since its debut in June 2022, the firm has been well received by investors, partners, and brands who share similar core values about sustainable fashion, green consumption, and environmental-friendly business cultures.

Notable collaborations include the “Thrifty to Nifty” project with Comfort and the secondhand flea market “Dare 2 Rewear” event with food delivery application Baemin.

Phuong is the former Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Be Group, JSC, a thriving ride-sharing application, and Cake, a digital online banking application by VPBank.

With over ten years of experience working in the fashion industry in Europe and the U.S., Phuong has amassed a profound knowledge of the innerworkings of the fashion and luxury merchandise industries.

Working alongside Phuong is Chief Growth Officer Trinh Thanh Huyen, who has years of experience leading multinational corporations in Southeast Asian markets. Huyen was responsible for business development at Be and Cake, growing the applications’ customer bases to the millions of users that they have today.

While troubled by the fashion industry’s excess, the two women also realized the unlimited potential that the secondhand fashion market holds. Together, they built a team with the brightest minds who shared the core value of sustainability.

From there, Piktina was created with the aim of raising awareness and promoting sustainable consumer behavior in Vietnamese youths, as well as developing a circular fashion economy in Vietnam and other markets within Asia.

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