Malaysia has an estimated e-commerce market value of USD4 billion. Doesn’t sound too shabby, until you expand the borders to include SEA and you’re now looking at a USD100 billion market.
If you’re a business owner with some measure of ambition, you’d want a slice of that.
But getting your products out of Malaysia and into the hands of the people who want them isn’t an easy feat. There’s a lot of red tape to go through, and it can also be a very costly affair.
So how can you go about it?
Everpeaks®, a Malaysian business founded 4 years ago, has made it their mission to help business owners in this exact situation. They want to enable manufacturers to reach consumers globally.
Get To Know: Everpeaks® is an end-to-end e-commerce managed services provider and technology platform.
As the CEO & founder, Joachim Sebastian, shared with us, “We are the expert pilots hired to guide the aircraft owned by brand owners and manufacturers flying in the world of e-commerce.”
And they have the numbers to back up their label as experts. In 2019, they generated RM8 million in export revenue for their clients.
Building A Brand Worthy Of Trust
Everpeaks® may seem very assured now, but when they were starting out, things were quite different. As a new company, they had to deal with limited resources while still pursuing their growth.
“We had to build our execution plan on a budget and spend only when we acquire sales. Using this methodology we have maintained our company and borderline break even while achieving a 72% of revenue growth rate year-on-year,” shared Joachim.
“We refused to follow the standard burn and grow methodology employed by some tech startups. That has paid off significantly especially learning from the downfall of WeWork and other overly inflated startups.”
“I believe that the market no longer will tolerate such valuations and move to a more fundamental driven decision making process for investments.”
Strategic partnerships also allowed them to gather more clout and credibility.
Besides being the only official Amazon Service Partner Network Member in South East Asia, and the only eBay Channel Partner in Malaysia, Everpeaks® is also a recognised partner of government bodies like Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and an eAggregator under Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE).
On top of that, Everpeaks® has gained global recognition and was also invited as a Keynote Speaker for the White Label Global Expo in Germany, London and USA.
A Global Event, A Decade Of Growth
This current era has often been described as a “time of uncertainty”, but Joachim and his team also see opportunities now.
“COVID-19 has accelerated the world of e-commerce by trajecting it to years ahead. In the USA, e-commerce as a portion of retail has grown 11 percent in 8 weeks to 26%. In context, that is equivalent to the combined 10 years of growth previously in the same market,” he shared.
Thanks to the groundwork they’ve laid out over the past few years, Everpeaks® has strategically positioned themselves to become the driving force behind Manufacturer to Consumer (M2C) Commerce.
Later this year, the team will be launching a new business division, Fulfilment by Everpeaks® (FBE).
A duty-free warehouse in Malaysia is key to FBE’s operations. FBE will allow brands to have centralised duty-free warehousing, an inventory management system, and e-commerce integration with platforms like Lazada, Shopify, and eBay, all in one place.
And when it comes to business, money talks. Through FBE, SMEs around the world can get access to duty-free e-commerce integrated fulfilment for only RM4,000 monthly. Bonded warehousing without the tech infrastructure generally starts at RM30,000 and above per month.
“Our solution will reduce the barriers to entry while enabling global commerce to be beneficial to the smaller enterprises around the world,” said Joachim.
Getting The Pieces In Place
In 2018, Everpeaks® were the recipient of the Cradle CIP300 grant of RM300,000, and since then remained self-funded until recently. In June 2020, they began raising funds on pitchIN, an equity crowdfunding (ECF) platform.
Thanks to their lead angel investor who has already committed RM500,000 (with another RM500,000 to follow in February 2021), they’ve reached and exceeded their minimum funding target. They are still accepting investments until they reach their RM3 million target.
The More You Know: Everpeaks® is also an officially approved Angel Tax Incentive certified company. This means that a registered Angel Investor can get a tax exemption of up to RM500,000 per year by investing that same amount with them.
The funding they hope to raise will provide them with a 1-year runway and more crucially, be used for business expansion.
“This is our first round of fundraising and it may also be our last,” said Joachim. “We have no plans on raising a second round after this to continue burning. If all goes according to plan, we are looking towards a 12x to our revenue within 2 years. This, combined with our 3 years of audited results will give us access to commercial funding from banks.”
According to Joachim, FBE is also very scalable, and this is well in line with their current fundraising on pitchIN.
“Our baseline cost will not increase greatly with new clients being sourced and most importantly we are aiming to issue dividends within 2 years as a business target. This is due to external investors now being part of our journey. We believe that every party involved in our company should receive due returns.”
- Take part in Everpeaks®’ fundraising on pitchIN here.
