Founded by Former Flipkart, Amazon Execs, E-Commerce Firm Ula Raises $20 Mn in Funding

Ula Co-founders [Image - ula.app]

Jakarta, Indonesia headquartered Ula, which aims to help small retailers solve inefficiencies that they face in supply chain, inventory and working capital, has raised $20 million in a Series A financing round led by existing investor Quona Capital and B Capital Group.

Other existing investors including Sequoia Capital India and Lightspeed also participated in the round.

Ula was, founded last year in January, by a former executive of Flipkart in India, Nipun Mehra, along with Alan Wong (former Amazon executive), Derry Sakti (formerly with FMCG giant P&G in Indonesia), and Riky Tenggara (formerly with  Lazada and aCommerce).

Ula, which brings the power of e-commerce to the small store owners across South East Asia, has offices in Bengaluru, India and Singapore.

Earlier in June last year, Ula raised $10.5 million in a funding round led by Sequoia India and Lightspeed India. SMDV, Quona Capital, Saison Capital, Alter Global and a clutch of prominent angels, and interestingly the whole founding team of India's B2B marketplace, Udaan, participated in that round.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Nipun Mehra, said -

Much like India, much of the Indonesian retail market is unorganized. In the food and vegetable category, for instance, there are lots of farmers who sell to agents, who then sell to markets. From these markets, the inventory goes to small wholesalers, and so on. There are lots of players in the chain.

In one of his previous stints, Nipun Mehra has also worked with Sequoia Capital India.

Serving more than 20,000 stores, Ula currently operates in the FMCG and food and vegetable spaces, but it intends to broaden its offerings to include apparel and eventually electronics.

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