Southeast Asian tech startup StoreHub, the tech platform which enables restaurants and retailers to automate and grow their business, has raised $13.5 million in new funding, an amount that will be used to strengthen its operations in the Philippines and the rest of the Asean region. 

The pre-Series B funding round was led by 500 Global with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, OSK, and others. 

“In the post-Covid rush to reopen, businesses have had to make new changes to adapt to the new normal. In line with this, the Philippines and the region have had to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies to meet the demands of the time. With ‘revenge travel’ and ‘revenge dining’, retail and F&B business owners are looking for ways to improve operational efficiency and maximize their revenue per customer. StoreHub enables business owners to make more money and get more time for their families, or to expand even more,” StoreHub CEO and Co-Founder Wai Hong Fong said. 

Cofounded in 2013 by Wai Hong Fong and Congyu Li, StoreHub started as a pioneer of cloud-based point of sales (POS) systems in the Asean region. Today, the platform powers over 15,000 paying retail and restaurant outlets in Southeast Asia and has expanded its offering to include QR-based table ordering, loyalty, automated customer engagement and more. 

In the last 12 months, StoreHub has processed over 128 million transactions worth over $1.6 billion in Gross Transaction Volume (GTV), a 40 percent increase over the previous year and a sign of the resurgent times. 

New paying stores coming onto the platform have also seen a 5x growth from the year before. Most of all, acquisition costs for new customers have improved to near break even within the first month. To match the surging demand, StoreHub has been expanding its team accordingly, bringing in over 100 new hires in the last six months. In 2021, StoreHub reached close to net profitability by growing average customer revenue throughout the pandemic. 

The latest funding round will be used to continue fueling healthy growth and technology innovation to deepen the value of each customer.

For 500 Global, leading StoreHub’s round is one of the first of many “really big bets” the firm is taking in its top-performing companies. 

“We joined their first round in 2016, with a small $150,000 check. Fast forward to today, we have invested more than $10 million cumulatively on top of that,” shared Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Global. “Considering similar companies like Toast are valued at $10.5 billion, StoreHub already has approximately a quarter of Toast’s customer size with another estimated two million more potential businesses in Thailand, Malaysia, and Philippines to onboard. This in turn creates the playbook for ‘rest of world.’ We believe StoreHub is incredibly valuable because it creates incredible value for so many more SMEs.”

In the Philippines, StoreHub is fast becoming the partner of choice for many restaurants, cafes, and retail stores to successfully automate their operations. It is one of the few point-of-sale system providers accredited by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Since its launch, StoreHub has served a wide range of SME merchants in the Philippines alone, ranging from multistore cafes like Coffee Academics and Tender Loving Cakes to restaurants like Wagyu Studio and Kondwi. 

“We see a huge potential for Filipino F&B and retail SMEs to grow sustainably through digitisation. StoreHub is committed to helping bridge the tech gaps in the market,” Fong said.