Temasek and CapitaLand to invest $5 million in Ace Turtle

The venture capital arms of Singapore's sovereign fund Temasek and Southeast Asia's largest real estate developer CapitaLand have teamed up to invest more than $5 million (Rs 32.2 crore) in Bengaluru-based ecommerce consultancy Ace Turtle. Temasek's Vertex Venture led the Series-A funding and CapitaLand's C31Ventures is the co-investor in Ace Turtle, an omni-channel specialist.

Ben Mathias, India head, Vertex, said, "We looked at the market opportunity and we realised that in India, Southeast Asia, and Middle East, all the ecommerce players are moving towards omni-channel. While ecommerce companies are going omni-channel, the offline companies have been struggling to go online. For some reason, the offline retailers in Asia have not been successful going online and this has been a big problem for them. Here we are looking for a solution."

The startup handles ecommerce operations of brands including Puma, Ray-Ban, Fossil, Max, Arrow, Flying Machine, Ed Hardy, and US Polo. It uses a proprietary platform that integrates online and offline retail channels.

Ace Turtle said it will use the funding to enter overseas markets, starting with Southeast Asia.

Nitin Chhabra, Co-founder, Ace Turtle, said, "We will use the money primarily to enhance our technology platform, build our leadership team and look at other markets in Southeast Asia."

Mathias said, "We will definitely expand into other Asian markets starting with Singapore and Malaysia. It will be sufficient for us for the next two years. This is the new fund. Vertex Southeast Asia Fund-3 and we have not yet closed the fund, so we don't know where we will end up."

Mathias said Vertex is bullish on India's ecommerce and omni-channel prospects and the Singapore fund would like to be part of any future fundraising Ace Turtle plans to do.

"Generally $3-5 million is our first cheque and then we do reserve capital for follow-on rounds as we do both Series A and Series B. That is our model," Mathias said.