HipVan adds Wavemaker as investor, records $3.2M annualized revenue

After raising US$1.12 million from LionRock Capital, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, Silicon Straits, serial entrepreneur Darius Cheung, and Singapore local celebrity Jade Seah, HipVan tells Tech in Asia that it has added Singapore-based venture capital firm Wavemaker to the list. That brings its seed funding to a total of S$1.65 million (US$1.32 million).

“We’re very excited to announce the participation of Wavemaker in an extension of our seed round financing,” says Danny Tan, co-founder at HipVan.

“Both Paul Santos and Eric Manlunas are extremely sharp investors, and we are particularly impressed by their track record in e-commerce investments such as Luxola,” he added.

The design-focused ecommerce startup has gained quite some momentum it seems. Back in July, HipVan reported that it recorded an annualized revenue of more than US$1 million. Today, Tan tells us that it has tripled that figure in the past five months to S$4 million (US$3.2 million).

“We’re seeing our expansion of categories like furniture and home & living pay off incredibly well and can’t wait to do more,” says Tan.

In addition to today’s announcement, HipVan is giving away a total of S$1 million (US$800,000) in store credits to existing users. New users can receive a S$5 (US$4) gift voucher if they sign up from now till midnight December 10, 2014.

While HipVan seems to be doing well, its international counterpart Fab.com has lost its shine. Recent TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal reports suggest that Fab.com, once valued at US$1 billion, might be selling at anywhere around $15 million or $25 million. On this matter, Tan says:

Fab is a little more complicated to comment since we don’t know the internal happenings. As I personally understand, most of Fab’s employees moved to Hem and the CEO moved long ago. So what exactly are they selling? I’m not sure. But Fab is just one of dozens of home and living online stores and it feels strange to say this but they seem like the only one not doing well.
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