Singapore mobile dating hit Paktor has just raised another impressive round of funding, securing $10m.
This latest round is their largest, and takes the startup’s total funding to over $20m.
The funding round was led by YJ Capital – the corporate VC arm of Yahoo Japan – and joined by existing investors Vertex Asia Fund, PT Media Nusantara Citra, Majuven and Convergence Ventures.
New investors in the round included Global Grand Leisure, Golden Equator Capital and Sebrina Holdings Venture Capital.
The funding will be used to push growth in North Asia markets like Japan and Korea, as well as boosting sales and marketing efforts in Indonesia.
The CEO & founder of Paktor, Joseph Phua, who spoke at this year’s GDI Amsterdam conference, said: “This latest funding round will help further grow our leadership in the rapidly growing lifestyle and social dating space, and allow us to bring our brand to even more young professionals through new channels, O2O services and market launches.
“Our focus remains in Asian markets and this round also brings us one step closer to our mission of connecting singles in Asia through technology-enabled platforms.”
Paktor also wants to grow its offline service in existing markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and Korea.
Called GaiGai, it is an independent offline dating agency wholly owned by Paktor with headquarters in Singapore.
Using a free and paid membership system, GaiGai offers singles both personalised tailored matchmaking – connecting members with relationship managers – as well as organising social events for singles such as karaoke & dinner, as well as dating and image courses.
And with this extra focus, Paktor said it expects to hit net revenue of over $10m this year – having seen a 100x increase year-on-year compared to 2015.
After closing $3.3m in Series A from Vertex Ventures back in November 2014 – which took its initial funding to $5m since launching in June 2013 – Paktor has continued to close increasingly larger funding rounds as the dating app grows across the Southeast Asia market.
In July last year, Paktor raised another $7.5m of Series B funding, as well as an undisclosed round from MNC Group this March.
And with its Series B announcement, the dating business said it had over 5m users – a number it expects to hit 15m by the end of 2016.
To find out more about Paktor, read our interview with founder & CEO Joseph Phua here.