Paktor Announces Another $7.5m In Funding
Singapore-based dating app Paktor has just secured an extra $7.5m of Series B funding.
The funding comes from Convergence Ventures, Majuven, and existing investor Vertex Venture Holdings.
This puts the app’s total funding at almost $12.3m, after receiving another $3m of Series A funding six months ago from Vertex Venture Holding.
Paktor plan to use this funding to further expand the app’s reach in Asia, hoping to reach 15m users by 2016.
When we spoke to Paktor founder Joshua Phua, he talked about what makes the dating app different:
“Paktor provides effective matching based on mutual interests and impacts the dating industry by offering a service with a strong focus on human interaction. It also solves culture-specific issues with streamlined and user-friendly features on its app and provides authentic connections and mutually-beneficial pairings based on similar likes, interests and more.
“Paktor has a strong presence in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. Its user base is quite skewed towards locals in each market that Paktor is in. Paktor offers a cross-country matching feature with auto-translation to allow members to match with members from other countries.”
The company, which Phua described as being similar to IAC, also raised $500,000 last March from Hong Kong-based angel investors.
The Tinder-style dating app has over 1.5m users in the South-East Asia region, and Phua said that its users spend on average just under 13 hours a month on the app.
In terms of expansion, Phau said with the funding the company plans to “expand Paktor’s services into new territories like Malaysia, increase product offerings such as offline events and premium personal services, and bring the Paktor experience from your mobile to your desktop. There will also be investment in new talent as the brand grows larger and expands into new markets.”
Read our interview with the Paktor founder here, and download the app here.