Edamama

Edamama, the Philippines’ leading parenting-focused e-commerce platform, has secured a $20 million Series A funding round led by Alpha JWC Ventures. The round was also participated by its existing investors including Gentree Fund, Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. (RRHI), and Kickstart Ventures.

Decisions on what products to buy or services to avail of as parents are often influenced by research, social proofing, and seeking out detailed reviews. We, therefore, think that shopping increasingly needs to be a discovery-led experience instead of a search-driven process. 

Our investment strategy revolves around today’s new customer, who might be the digital consumer or the digital company. They might be digital natives, or they could be newly digital. In any case, technology plays a bigger, more important, more fundamental role in their daily lives today.

Gentree Fund, a Philippines-based sector-agnostic fund that focuses on investments into early-stage B2C and B2B companies, has just announced that it has earmarked an initial $40 million to invest in early and growth-stage Southeast Asian startups with plans of expanding into the Filipino market.

The company was established amid the pandemic by its founder Bela Gupta D’Souza, who saw the pain points of mothers as consumers when purchasing online. She said that it is common for mothers to spend many hours in search of the best products for their children only to end up with inferior quality products from untrusted sources.