"Trip Advisor for baby products" completes $5.5m funding round
11 September 2019 @ 12:00am
Having successfully completed a $5.5m capital raise to help them expand their baby product review and e-commerce platform into China, Tell Me Media recently featured in the Australian Financial Review to discuss their raise and plans for the future.
Labelled the ‘Trip Advisor for baby products’ Tell Me Baby was developed after founders Mat and Julia Colbron had their first baby in 2015 and saw the gap in the market, struggling to get real advice from real parents about the best baby products in Australia.
Tell Me Baby is the first social marketplace in the world bringing together a community of parents and brands in a trusted environment to share their experience, opinion on baby products and to purchase in this marketplace.
OnMarket advised Tell Me Media through the $5.5m raise, including a $5m cornerstone investment from a Singapore-based fund after the Tell Me Media founders had initially planned to undertake an equity crowdfunding raise. The remaining allocation of $500,000 was exhausted in a matter of hours via OnMarket and was heavily oversubscribed. As a restricted offer, the opportunity went out to a OnMarket’s sophisticated investors – some of whom had success with China plays, Wattle Health [ASX: WHA] and Keytone Dairy [ASX: KTD] – both recent IPOs that were available to all OnMarket members.
Highlights of the Tell Me Media business
- Developer of social marketplaces having successfully created Australia’s largest social marketplace for baby products with 23,000 reviews across 3,200 products, and now live in China
- Scalable model to be rolled out to pets and beauty products, across multiple geographies
- Large addressable markets across baby, pets and beauty of ~A$23 billion in Australia and A$777 billion in China
- Monthly organic reach of over 616k parents in Australia alone, providing over 400 brands with access to lucrative, growing demographic
- Growth metrics – experiencing rapid growth with reach and platform use up 300%+ in April 2019 on last year
- Leveraging AI to provide deep insights for brands around consumer behaviour and sentiment
- Trusted by blue-chip multinational brands such as Huggies, Nestle, Biostime, Medela and Britax and Swisse
- Growing monthly recurring revenue stream, with further growth expected following recent China and eCommerce platform launch
- Experienced board of e-commerce, FMCG and China experts with $100+ million in previous exits
CEO and Co-Founder of Tell Me Baby, Mat Colbron, said the successful capital raise would help them to achieve the necessary growth into new markets.
“This gives us the acceleration we need to go after all markets now, while solidifying our position in Australia and building out the e-commerce function.”
Tell Me Media has plans to replicate the Tell Me Baby business model into other verticals such as pet care and health and beauty, and intends to roll out these initiatives in the medium term. With lucrative markets in both Australia and China, this expansion is anticipated to ignite significant growth for Tell Me Media.
Tell Me Media were thrilled with the outcome and were pleased that OnMarket could assist them through the process.
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news/tell-me-baby-funding-china/