Partipost, Asia’s fastest growing crowd influencer marketing & commerce platform, has secured an investment of US$3.5 million (S$4.8 million). SPH Ventures led the round with participation from Quest Ventures and other investors. Partipost’s Founder and CEO, Jonathan Eg, has assembled an investor base with deep domain knowledge in content, artiste management, data and advertising, as well as extensive industry networks which are critical for market expansion plans. Partipost counts singer/celebrity Will Pan as one of its earliest investors.

In connection with this investment, Chua Boon Ping, CEO of SPH Ventures will join Partipost’s Board of Directors as a director and Jeffrey Seah of Quest Ventures will join as an observer. 

The influencer marketing industry is set to grow to US$9.7 billion in 2020 according to a report by Influencer Marketing Hub. The funds raised will further develop Partipost’s tech platform and accelerate business expansion into Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia, as well as strengthen current operations in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan. 

Partipost is a crowd influencer marketing platform that matches brands to influencers with the highest brand affinity to drive authentic word of mouth marketing. With data insights collected through its inapp polls and user behaviours, Partipost’s data-centric framework crowdsources influencers with follower sizes ranging from a few hundred to millions of followers. Driving from consumers' familiarity and increasing trust for influencer marketing and commerce, Partipost rewards influencers for both their media reach and message impact in their curated social media content message, measured in their followers’ responses.

Social media powered consumer digital engagements accelerated rapidly in the past 2 years as brands and governments shift almost all their marketing communication thrusts online to target Millennials and the increasing digital-economy consumer base. The COVID-19 pandemic has expanded Partipost’s clientele - covering multi-market MNC and leading local brands such as Adidas, Arnott’s, Kellogg’s, Red Bull, Chope and Gojek/GoPay.

Since the launch of the Partipost mobile app in 2018, the startup has seen an average of double to triple digit percentage growth (month-on-month) to more than 200,000 influencers. Influencers are drawn to Partipost’s influencer-friendly commercial framework and extensive clientele funnel. With the rapid traction, Partipost has been able to see through 2,500 influencer marketing campaigns for over 850 brands across geographical markets in the past 12 months.

Critically, the mobile app allows Partipost to activate thousands of influencers for a single campaign within 24 hours. Such speed to market is heavily sought by today’s digital-first marketers who demand “same-day” reaction to competitive market moves via contextual and segmented “retaliation campaigns” - a combination not offered by traditional marketing and advertising service providers and production houses. Partipost is set to hit over 1,000,000 influencers within the next 18 months. 

Jonathan Eg, Founder and CEO of Partipost, said: “Our latest fundraising round will enable Partipost to develop even better technology and collect more data to help us achieve our goals of helping brands connect to the right crowd of influencers as well as empowering these influencers with ability to be  rewarded. Having strategic investors, such as SPH Ventures and Quest Ventures, will provide us with domain expertise and market networks to realize our growth vision faster. 

Chua Boon Ping, CEO of SPH Ventures, said: “Social influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing segments within Digital marketing. Hence, we are very excited to lead Partipost’s Series A round to further accelerate its growth. We are impressed by Partipost’s strong traction in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan as a young startup and look forward to partnering it to scale to new markets". 

Jeffrey Seah, Partner of Quest Ventures, said: “Following the recent Singapore social-distanced election campaigns, we notice that politicians are effective as digital influencers, akin to marketing spokespersons. Partipost’s potential resides in its ease of onboarding quality content influencers with loyal follower bases. Besides millennial socialites, we believe Partipost will be able to onboard and scale the follower bases for established celebrities, news anchors, society spokespersons and literary writers - to create vertical unlimited-volume content channels that are not restricted by appointment viewing or location-need consumption restrictions imposed by traditional physical media platforms. Partipost will drive a new era of commercial content monetisation partnerships. They are an excellent team of passionate technology entrepreneurs and have our full support.”