A homegrown e-commerce platform designed for mothers, Edamama has raised $5 million, or roughly P250 million, in its latest pre-series A round to bankroll its automation, product development and innovations, as well as the company’s warehouse and logistics operations.
The round was led by Gentree Fund, together with Foxmont Capital Partners, Robinsons Retail, and Kickstart Ventures Inc. a wholly-owned unit of Globe Telecom.
Edamama was founded amid the pandemic by Bela Gupta D’Souza, who witnessed the pain points of mothers as consumers when purchasing online.
She said that it is common for them to spend many hours in search of the best products for their children only to end up with substandard items from untrusted sources.
With this in mind, the platform addresses the quality issue and other challenges common among e-commerce sites, such as channel fragmentation, non-established brand trust, the lack of a discovery-led buying experience, and poor customer service.
It enables mothers to get easy online access to quality products and services while ensuring the lowest prices through a simplified purchasing system.
Since its conception, Edamama has launched several products designed to make shopping more convenient for moms and their families.
Through the portal’s Gift Registry, users can create gift wish lists for special occasions, share these with loved ones, and then receive their desired items gift wrapped and in time for the event.
Another feature is Subscribe & Save—the Philippines’ first online diaper subscription service launched in exclusive partnership with Pampers—wherein moms can subscribe to Pampers variants for delivery every 30 or 60 days, with free shipping and freebies.
Explore is a one-stop destination for parents to book the best online classes, events and activities for their children.
Moreover, the platform delivers authentic parenting content, personalized promos, and a community for parents to make the right decisions.
For greater engagement, it developed “bean” rewards that can be converted to peso credits.
“The developing e-commerce landscape that sells everything to everyone is a bit of a wild, wild west, but through mindful curation and intense engagement, Edamama is earning trust and repeat purchases, capturing a meaningful and growing share of the mommy market,” said Kickstart Ventures president Minette Navarrete.
According to Google’s eConomy SEA 2020 report, the Philippine e-commerce market expanded by 55 percent at the height of the pandemic as the purchasing behavior of consumers transitioned from face-to-face to digital.
One of the major growth areas is the maternity-products segment, mainly due to the country’s high fertility rate. An HKTDC commissioned study predicts that the category’s value will surpass the $1 billion mark in 2022.
“E-commerce is a scale game and we’re very excited about scaling up,” D’Souza said.
Catering to mothers across the country, Edamama acknowledges the need for further upgrades on its logistics operations to cope with the increase in orders nationwide.
It hopes to use part of the funds raised to expand its warehouse capabilities and further improve its delivery services for customers to receive their goods more quickly.
Apart from this, the company is also working on omnichannel expansion and providing new mediums of direct-to-consumer communication, such as selling through a live stream.
“Our goal is to continue being vertically focused, so we could gain and build the trust of more mothers in the country,” D’Souza said.