Product Search Engine Finds Itself $7.1 Million in Funding, Aims to Topple Alibaba’s eTao

The Chinese product search engine B5M.com has attracted and secured a significant US$7.1 million in series A funding that was led by Oak Investment Partners and Giosis Holdings. It will strengthen the site in its aim to be a leading, independent product search engine in China.

B5M – which is a clever pun on ‘help me buy’ in Chinese – said, in an announcement to confirm its funding, that the cash would be used for website development, marketing, and ongoing innovation. The search collates product options from across the Chinese e-commerce space, and allows users a unified way of searching through them. A search for one brand label (pictured above) leads to numerous clothing options which then go off (pictured below) to an array of other online retailers. The company claims that its site has indexed 30 million products and reviews on hundreds of B2C malls.

In this case, my product search on B5M led me to the e-commerce site Xiu.com.

The announcement notes that B5M will also get some expert guidance as part of this funding:

Allan Kwan, an industry veteran who led Yahoo! search in Asia Pacific, and Youngbae Ku, a successful entrepreneur who founded GMarket, which was acquired by eBay, will join B5M’s board of directors representing Oak Investment Partners and Giosis Holdings, respectively.

The site’s founder, Yeogirl Yun, said that the company’s aim was to build “state-of-the-art search and data mining technologies to give Chinese consumers the power to choose the best new or used product or group-buying deal from over 200 business-to-consumer websites and 100 group-buying sites.” The funding would allow the site to go “to the next level.”

B5M is in a valuable niche as it’s an independent product search engine that’s able to claim that it’s more trustworthy – and is more free to monetize – than similar services offered by major web players in China such as Alibaba’s eTao.com, or Netease’s upcoming refresh of Youdao. Indeed, last autumn eTao was under attack from many angles as numerous e-commerce sites said that it cannot be a fair and agnostic search engine since it’s run by Alibaba, which also operates China’s largest B2C and C2C online stores. That caused 360Buy to block eTao from searching its site, and then some other rivals such as Suning.com followed suit. But Alibaba is defiant, investing more money in eTao and saying that it doesn’t favour the company’s own e-commerce offerings such as Tmall.

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Our Ethics Page

We recently added an Ethics page on our site where readers can learn more about our policies, our investors, and our editorial process. This is something we have been working on for a couple of months.

The timing turned out to be apt because, recently, a few bloggers in the Asian tech sphere have raised concerns about our connection with East Ventures (EV) and a possible conflict of interest in our coverage. And that’s fine, as we welcome all debate on the tech ecosystem in the region.

While we are always careful to disclose potential conflicts of interest, and all our articles about East Ventures’ investments or companies clearly disclose our own connection to EV, we appreciate that as our blog gets bigger, these sorts of complex issues are going to arise, and readers are going to have questions.

We want to assure you that Penn Olson will continue our model of transparent coverage and full disclosure, and we welcome questions and comments about our policies so that we can make our blog the best and most transparent source for Asian tech news available on the web.

We have also recently added a report error feature at the end of every article to facilitate user feedback. Of course, you can also just leave your feedback in the comments section.  Either way, we’ll respond to your feedback as quickly as we can.

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Freshdesk takes fresh approach to pricing, launches ‘Day Pass’

Freshdesk, the company that was called a ‘freaking rip-off’ by Zendesk CEO is  now gearing to take on the big daddies of customer support industry with the launch of its freemium pricing model.

Chennai based startup, Freshdesk (earlier raised $1mn from Accel partners) has taken a fresh approach to pricing and has launched ‘Day Pass’ that allows companies to scale the support team on-demand. Targeted towards seasonality, the Day Pass lets businesses add temporary or part-time agents for just one day. The part-time agents get complete access to all the functionality in the customer’s Freshdesk plan without having to pay for the whole month.

Surely, a good replica of real world support challenges being faced by SMBs.

Beside ‘Day Pass’, the cloud-based social help desk software provider has announced new pricing (has taken a ‘fresh’ approach to messaging).

The “Sprout” plan is meant for organizations that require robust email and phone based customer support. The “Blossom” plan brings in social capabilities like engaging with customers through community forums and supporting them through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The “Garden” plan offers features suited for larger organizations, such as supporting multiple products, generating advanced reports and managing multiple SLA policies . The Day Passes are priced at $1 per agent per day in the Sprout plan, and $2 per agent per day in the Blossom and Garden plans. Freshdesk will be offering three Day Passes for all existing and new customers for a limited period.

Also, Freshdesk now offers a freemium model where the first agent in every plan is always free (existing customers can also switch to new plans), a good way to lure paid trials.

Very well chalked out market penetration strategy, given that Freshdesk is (also) targeting businesses who aren’t happy with Zendesk pricing and are now looking for an alternative.

Recommended Read: How to Price your SaaS Application – The Definitive Guide

Analysis: How SAAS Pricing Plans Have Evolved Over a Period of Time

Articles by Girish Mathrubootham, founder of Freshdesk:

• What I learnt from my fundraising experience? [The Freshdesk Story]
• Explained: 7 Steps to Incorporate a Company in USA (from outside USA)

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Price Engine 85M Raising $7.1M in Series A

Chinese price engine b5m.com (or 帮我买, help me buy) announced raising US$ 7.1 million in Series A round of funding led by Oak Investment Partners and Giosis Holdings while the money will go towards website development, marketing and ongoing innovation, according to the Shanghai-based company.

The shopping service combines items and shopping data with community features to help online buyers make shopping decisions assisted by comprehensive, accurate and unbiased search results.

Founded in 2007, the site as of now has indexed over 30 million business-to-consumer products, product reviews, and even shopping-related web articles. Yeogirl Yun, founder and CEO of B5M said that “We have set out to build state-of-the-art search and data mining technologies to give Chinese consumers the power to choose the best new or used product or group-buying deal from over 200 business-to-consumer websites and 100 group-buying sites.”

As China ecommerce sector keeps its fast growing pace, prince engines that help people buy smartly and save more have been springing up like Smarter.com.cn, askyaya.com, Youdao Shopping (by NetEase), Beargoo.com (3C-centric) and Taobao’s Etao.

Related posts:

1. Miqi Raises RMB Tens Of Millions From DT Capital Partners
2. Baidu Phone on Sale by Year’s end?
3. Announcing ChinaBang Awards 2011, the Most Respectable Chinese Startup-Focus Annual Awards

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Daily Deals Market in China Sees Groupon Failing Badly, Movie Tickets in Demand

Group-buy aggregators and analysts Dataotuan are back in action, tracking 125 deals sites throughout January to find the latest trends among consumers in China, and to see how the sites themselves are performing.

In summary, this time around we observe that movie ticket deals are a new craze among buyers, Groupon’s (NASDAQ:GRPN) Gaopeng.com is failing and flailing, and for the first time we meet some shopping-only deals sites, such as Xiutuan, that avoid the usual array of restaurant offers. In the broader market, we finally see some stability as the top five sites, led once again by Meituan, retain their positions.

Here are some of the key slides from Dataotuan’s newest monthly report:

Market Share in January

After more than a year of tumult in this group-buy sector, we now see a clear hierarchy, led by Meituan and 55Tuan, just as it was at the end of December. Meituan is indeed consolidating its lead.

Look down to 14th position on the pie chart to find Gaopeng, Groupon’s official venture in China. Its market share slid slightly once again; now at 2.1 percent, it’s down from 3.2 percent last October, and has been cut in half since its 4.2 percent share of the pie last August.

Number of Deals Actually Sold

The number of deals that are actually sold is, of course, a good indicator of their quality. In this respect, the two market leaders show that they also offer attractive deals. In this area, we almost always see strong form from Dianping and the Renren-invested Nuomi, both of which always seem to know what their customers want. You’ll note that Gaopeng was offering a lot of deals, but it – once again – failed to turn that into a large number of sold items.

Movie Tickets in Demand

Movie tickets deals are now – excuse the pun – a hot-ticket item on many deals sites, growing to now account for 13.4 percent of all revenue in the mainland China group-buying sector. It is therefore the largest subcategory of leisure purchases.

Shopping Deals

The report covers, for the first time, shopping-only deals sites, which tend to sell stuff like make-up, watches, clothes and accessories, and not items like restaurant deals, holidays, etc. And so we encounter some new names: Xiutuan.com seems to be the market leader, though this market is clearly less stable and it fluctuates each month. Tuanxiu seems pretty solid as well. But this sector does have a few recognizable names, such as the Walmart-invested Yihaodian, and the cosmetics-oriented Miqi, which last year attracted some VC funding. Both those are mainly conventional e-commerce sites which also do daily deals on the side.

Check out the full report as a slideshow at the source link below.

[Source: Dataotuan’s blog]

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Impact Ventures Accelerator Program, for social enterprises, launches in Southeast Asia

The Impact Ventures Accelerator Program (IVAP), which provides 8 to 24 months, of business consulting and financial support to social enterprises, has been launched in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

The program is being run by LGT Venture Philanthropy, an impact investor spanning five continents that supports organizations with outstanding social and environmental impact.

IVAP is run in partnership with local partners around the region.

They are: GEPI in Indonesia, ChangeFusion in Thailand, CSIP in Vietnam, and xchange in Philippines.

Organizations that are registered legal entities, for or non-profit, in the respective countries are eligible to apply (full criteria). The deadline is 5th March, 2012, and only the top two to three entries from each country will be selected.

The accelerator program promises to provide business consultancy, funding of up to US$50,000 from equity, convertible loan or convertible grant, and access to mentors from Southeast Asia as well as LGT Venture Philanthropy’s global network of entrepreneurs, investment managers, and cooperation partners.

Quarterly workshops on topics like business modeling, market assessment and more will also be held, and participants may even potentially receive follow-on investments other institutions and individuals.

 

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Convert fans to customers with the new LiveJournal LJ Checkout

LiveJournal upgraded 50,000 Singapore blogshops to premier eC0mmerce stores with the new LJ Checkout system that allows for hassle-free eCommerce, social marketing and happier customers.

LiveJournal has been the home for Singapore blogshops, being Singapore’s largest female blogging and shopping portal. The social media platform attracts over one million unique visitors each month and has launched a localized version in Singapore.

Recently, LiveJournal Singapore announced the upgrading of over 50,000 blogshops in Singpoare with the launch of the LJ Checkout system. This upgrade will see these blogshops being made premier eCommerce stores on LiveJournal.

The system is enabled by two solid partnership with Paywhere Pte Ltd, an Echelon 2011 alumni, and MOLPay Sdn Bhd. According to Dickson Gregory, CEO of Paywhere in the press release, “We are very confident about this partnership. PayWhere is excited to integrate its social e-commerce solution, TackThis!, on Singapore’s premier shopping community and to make online purchases seamless and convenient for everyone. The partnership with LiveJournal is a natural fit since we both aim to encourage community interaction through technology.”

LJ Checkout is a combined product catalogue, shopping cart and online payment system enabled in both Singapore and Malaysia through the two partners mentioned earlier. Users will be able to choose from four available packages and will enjoy an additional 10 percent on these packages that will enable them to run their online stores across multiple social and blogging platforms with no extra effort.

We found a summary of how LJ Checkout can help blogshop owners.

Hassle-free eCommerce

- Mail orders that are no longer confusing.
- You can use credit or debit cards, NETS or MOLPoints and if you’d like to do a bank transfer you can stick to that too.
- Your inventory will be managed for you.
- You can set up in just 5 minutes.

Happy customers

- People visiting your blog will see a cleaner home page.
- They will be able to zoom into pieces to view details.
- You can even add in discount codes to reward loyal clients.

Social marketing skills

- Convert your current fans into customers and turn customers into advocates.
- This can be done because LJ Checkout lets you sell across various social networking platforms.

How much will this cost?

LJ Checkout offers four different schemes that take your budget into account, no matter how low it is. Here is an outline of what each scheme offers.

Basic: This scheme comes FREE! This allows you to feature up to ten products with the advantages of LJ Checkout.

Professional: This scheme originally costs $19.90 per month, but you get a 10 percent discount and can use it at $17.90 on a monthly basis. You can feature up to 500 products.

Enterprise: You get to try this at a 10 percent discount for $45.90 per month. This scheme allows you to feature up to 1000 products.

Unlimited: As the scheme suggests there is no limit to the number of items you feature here. This one comes with a 10 precent discount too at $89.90 per month.

A small percentage is charged over each transaction, however over the next 30 days no fee will be charged for any transactions. All of the schemes come with a free trial and the benefits get bigger with each upgrade.

Credits to this simple summary goes to The Whether Girl.

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Charles Chao: Weibo Looking to Boost Business Accounts

At a conference last night in Taipei, Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) CEO and Chairman Charles Chao spoke about the importance of Sina Weibo as a channel for marketing. To that end, Chao says, Sina is hoping to boost enterprise weibo accounts from the 100,000 or so it has currently to 1 million over the next year. “This is a very important direction for this year,” Chao said.

Chao also emphasized that multimedia will be important for weibo going forward, as more video and audio content is shared on the social media service.

What Chao didn’t mention, unsurprisingly, is that Sina Weibo is fast approaching the March 16th deadline for real-name user registration. New user numbers have been way down since January when the service began requiring real-name registration for new users, and active user numbers are expected to fall off a cliff when the restriction goes into effect for all users on March 16.

Sina has been tight-lipped about the impending weipocalypse, but Chao’s emphasis on business and marketing accounts at yesterday’s forum in Taipai may be one kind of coping strategy, as businesses almost always register real-name accounts to prevent fake/imitation accounts from popping up. Of course, Weibo will be a far less useful marketing channel for companies after its user numbers decline — and they almost certainly will decline, steeply — but we suppose it could always be useful as a B2B marketing channel.

But we’ll have to wait until next month to see what Weibo really looks like after the real-name requirement goes into effect. Personally I think it’s going to be bad — and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences agrees with me — but only time will tell.

[Via Sina Tech (the image, too)]

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