S

outheast Asia'€™s female-focused e-commerce platform MoxyBilna has officially rebranded itself as '€œOrami'€, after managing to secure investment of up to US$15 million in the fourth quarter of last year from several Asian investors.

With the new investment, Orami will further expand its operations in Southeast Asia, but Indonesia remains a priority as the country is still the company'€™s largest and most important market.

Several of Orami'€™s most significant investors include SMDV, which is the tech-focused branch of Indonesia'€™s Sinar Mas group, and Singapore-based Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Orami group chief executive officer Jeremy Fichet said that with the new investment, the company would intensify its operations in Indonesia such as by launching an official mobile app sometime in March or April.

The company hopes to increase its visitor views by two or threefold by the end of 2016. MoxyBilna previously netted 3 million visitors per month, being the combined traffic from Moxy and Bilna prior to their merger.

Currently, the service takes about 12,000 orders daily and is currently only available in Indonesia and Thailand, the latter of which is Moxy'€™s home country. Orami'€™s headquarters will be based in Jakarta.

Despite sticking to the traditional retail model, Orami may launch a curated online marketplace, Fichet said.

'€œWhat we want is to have an assortment of quality products that we are able to select carefully with as very few vendors as possible. So, we don'€™t plan to push the marketplace idea that other e-commerce platforms do so much,'€ he said on Wednesday.

Moxy co-founder and Orami chief managing officer Shannon Kalayanamitr said Orami chose to stick to the traditional retail format, instead of the marketplace format, because as the region'€™s leading platform for women'€™s products, it should be able to maintain quality at all costs.

'€œWe'€™ve stuck to the retail model because it is key for us to keep control over our inventory to ensure quality. For one thing, Bilna had a big warehouse in Indonesia and it was very efficient, and that is a key quality for us,'€ she explained.

Other measures that the company will take are to maximize its '€œsocial commerce'€ aspect, dedicated to creating a more social shopping experience, as well as working to integrate the Thai and Indonesian operations into one regional platform.

Orami noted that the demand in both Thailand and Indonesia was similar, with the baby-product segment being the most popular category in both countries, with groceries and beauty products coming after.

Meanwhile, Fichet added that the company might plan to expand its service operations into other Southeast Asian markets such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, as it was included in the business roadmap for 2016.

Women'€™s products platform Moxy only entered the Indonesian market in June 2015, but the Indonesia-developed Bilna has been operating since 2012, offering an array of mother, baby and grocery products.

They merged officially as MoxyBilna in January.