Una Brands, a Singapore-based startup that buys up e-commerce brands with the goal of transforming them into household names, has raised $40 million in its seed round of equity and debt financing, as the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a surge in demand for online shopping.

A number of investors joined the funding round, including 500 Startups, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital, Global Founders Capital and Maximilian Bitner, currently CEO of secondhand fashion platform Vestiaire Collective and former CEO of Lazada, a Singapore-based e-commerce platform backed by Alibaba, Una Brands said in a statement on Thursday.

Without disclosing the ratio of equity and debt in the round, the statement said that Una Brands will use the fresh capital to acquire and scale up e-commerce outfits in the Asia-Pacific region, where the company’s CEO Kiren Tanna estimates there are more than 10 million third-party brand owners selling on different platforms.

Una looks for brands with an annual revenue of between $300,000 and $20 million. It is open to many categories of brands provided they have strong stock keeping units and low seasonality, according to TechCrunch.

The company adopts a structured process to make long-term brand strategies and develop plans for their global expansion, with a promise to share profit with brand sellers after the acquisitions, according to its website.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

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