- Malaysian female portal Nuren Group announced a successful Series A+ funding round featuring Malaysia Debt Ventures Bhd (MDV), InnoVen Capital, and 500 TukTuks.
- They’ll use this funding to strengthen their online Motherhood brand in Thailand, as well as improve their portals in all existing markets.
Yesterday, online female resource platform Nuren Group announced their success in acquiring an undisclosed amount of funds through a Series A+ round, with investors such as Malaysia Debt Ventures Bhd (MDV), InnoVen Capital, and 500 TukTuks all involved. This round of funding comes after Nuren Group’s previous funding success where Gobi Partners led a round that saw the Malaysian platform net close to RM10 million.
For those unfamiliar, Nuren Group focuses on female family matters—particularly the stages from marriage to motherhood and beyond. Under their banner is a host of female-centric online portals that include Wedding.com.my and Motherhood.com.my, with their content localised to each focused target market—Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
These portals allow their users to view content and information about weddings, parenting, and family issues, and also allows them to find related products and services all within the same platform.
All this is indicative of how Nuren Group has evolved since its inception in 2013.
From first starting off as a website for bridal ideas and services, the group now is also a comprehensive provider of motherhood services and products.
For example, you can find things such as parental classes and baby warehouse sales on their portal.
As of today, Nuren Group has consolidated its presence in three key markets, with their community now including 2.5 million Southeast Asian mothers, 1.2 million monthly users, and 6 million monthly page views.
On their latest funding success, co-founder Petrina Goh explained that it was down to Nuren’s strong track records of growth within the past two years.
“We’ve more than doubled our revenues, and our community has grown ten times,” she said. “We’ve also demonstrated improved financial performance, with our Malaysian arm set to become profitable this year.”
Strong In Thailand
With this latest funding, Nuren Group will now aim to strengthen its presence in Thailand, a country that they view as prime for accelerated growth due to the double-digit growth in monthly users.
“We launched Motherhood.co.th in 2017, which is the localised version of our platform for the Thai market,” Petrina explained. “We now have over 400 brands and over 10,000 products listed on the website.”
“The Thai market has always been the centre of attention for well-known beauty and female brands,” she added. “But unbeknown to many, the Thai market is also home to many good quality baby brands.”
“With our regional presence, it’s our dream to bring these brands closer to Southeast Asian parents and help them access good quality products for their babies,” she said.
Aside from strengthening in the Thai market, Nuren Group will also take this opportunity to embolden its Motherhood brand across all markets, with the funds going to user acquisitions, improving user experiences, and various marketing activities.
Plenty Of Space For Growth
Speaking on Motherhood.com.my’s prospects, Petrina mentioned that its window of opportunity still remains wide open due to the under-representation of parenting e-commerce and content available online.
“We’re in a space where motherhood is largely under-represented compared to other categories that have largely been disrupted, such as fashion and beauty,” she said. “In comparison with other marketplaces and e-commerce platforms, we’re very community driven, and we give new parents product recommendations for their parenting journey in order to make informed buying decisions through our marketplace.”
At the same time, Petrina also revealed that the challenge for Nuren Group now was to ensure customer retention and loyalty, with the big threat now being the propensity for other domestic marketplaces to bring in much cheaper OEM (original equipment manufacturer) products instead of originals—something Nuren Group is averse to doing.
“Merchants and platforms like us will have to master the combination of show-rooming, web-rooming, holding events, demoing products, good in-store experiences, and focusing on after-sales services,” she said. “We also foresee e-commerce companies using data to predict spending and trend-setting to perform above peers.”
Editor’s Note: The feature image in this article has been replaced with a more recent version.
- You can find our more about Nuren Group’s online resources on their official website.
Feature Image Credit: Nuren Group