Desty Receives 46 Billion Rupiah Pre-Series A Funding Led by 5Y Capital

Micro site provider startup Desty has again announced the acquisition of a pre-series A funding round of $3,2 million or around 46 billion rupiah. This new funding was led by 5Y Capital. A number of investors also participated, including Fosun RZ Capital, January Capital, IN Capital, and East Ventures.

For your information, 5Y Capital is a VC from China (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) that focuses on early-stage funding. 5Y Capital has invested in Xiaomi and Kuaishou. Currently, Desty is 5Y Capital's first investment portfolio in Indonesia.

Desty is a digital platform that helps content creators, an influencer, and sellers on social media to market and sell their products. Users can create a mini site that is placed on a social media bio link or shop online for free in just a few minutes. The concept is similar to Linktree with broader features.

Desty was founded in October 2020 by Mulyono Xu (CEO) and Bill Wang (COO). Both have experience and building skills e-commerce for 17 years under the auspices of the Alibaba Group. This startup has previously pocketed early stage funding with an undisclosed value from East Ventures.

Through this additional investment, the company is still focused on increasing the number of teams and increasing its user base. According to Mulyono, currently the Desty team is strengthened by talents who have experience working in giant technology companies, ranging from Alibaba, Facebook, Google, Bukalapak.

In addition, he said, Desty also continues to strive to ensure that sellers who have joined the Desty ecosystem can develop their business efficiently. The Desty platform is claimed to have been used by hundreds of thousands of users. Especially in the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the seller or merchant must be able to adapt to managing their business digitally.

"We see Desty's exponential growth achieved at the right time due to its rapid growth E-commerce in Indonesia during the pandemic. Therefore, we believe that merchants need a variety of shopping options for consumers, either through marketplace, own website, or social media," said Mulyono.

This is also agreed by the Co-founder & Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Cuaca. According to him, the pandemic has had a positive impact in accelerating digital adoption to the wider community. Desty is considered to have paved the way for merchants, an influencer, and creators to start digitizing product sales digitally.

Based on data compiled by Desty from a number of sources, the number of transactions E-commerce jumped 18,1% to 98,3 million with an additional 12 million new users throughout 2020. There are three main destinations that Indonesians choose to shop, namely marketplace (97%), own business domain/website (91%), and social media (82%).

5Y Capital VP of Investment Hanson Hu added that links are an important key in the internet ecosystem because they can bring people together, online with offline, to demand with supply.

"In context e-commerce, links open up great opportunities in connecting social and content with transactions E-commerce as we see this trend in China. We believe Desty can be an infrastructure for links in the industry E-commerce Southeast Asia. That way, their presence can contribute to creating a content, social, and social ecosystem E-commerce closer," he added.

Currently, Desty offers two main products, namely Desty Page and Desty Store. Desty Page is a service landing page to optimize the link feature on social media accounts, especially Instagram. Meanwhile, Desty Store is a complementary channel marketplace which presents a platform to help users open shops online easily.

As a supporting product, Desty also opened Desty Academy as an information and training center for users who want to develop their business.