Vinomofo is launching in Singapore, the next step of its global expansion plans.
The Asian region move comes after its launch in New Zealand in June, and a $25 million investment deal with Blue Sky Venture Capital in April — the biggest funding round raised by an Australian tech startup.
“We’ve been blown away by the impact Vinomofo has had on wine lovers in Australia and New Zealand over the last five years, and we’re so excited to be launching in Singapore, our first step
into Asia as part of our global expansion,” said Vinomofo cofounder Andre Eikmeier.
“Singapore’s food culture is amazing and really fits with Vinomofo’s ethos. You can find the tastiest hawker fare at really reasonable prices – just look at the 2016 Michelin Guide for Singapore! That’s what Vinomofo is about, we want everyone to be able to experience good wine, and not have to pay a fortune for it. Which is why we can’t wait to pair Vinomofo with Singapore’s bustling food scene.”
In February Vinomofo co-founder Justin Dry revealed to Business Insider how it plans to use a “lite” business model for its overseas expansion to save years and millions.
“[Using it we could] roll out in 10 countries straight away, where we can test each of those markets to see how they took up our proposition,” Dry said.
“It also meant that for the same amount of money we could test all of those markets to see if there’s traction and follow that with teams on the ground.”
Dry and Eikmeier then broke down the data to decide where their initial markets would be.
“We looked at the whole world basically and we said what are markets that are interested in our products? What are markets that have difficult systems from producer to consumer and what are the markets that are consuming a lot of wine, and are fast growing countries?
“We looked at where traffic is coming from for our site at the moment. We get a lot of overseas traffic even though we only have an Australian offering.
“And, we did a lot of traveling. We travelled through the States, the UK to try and understand those markets, we talked to lots of people within those markets, we read all the research we could find on those markets, the growth trends – who was buying and how they were buying – to come up with the six markets that we have decided on as a ‘first step’.”
As a result they settled on New Zealand, Singapore, the US, Hong Kong, China, and the UK.
Vinomofo has plans for a launch in California within the first half of next year, but no date has been confirmed as yet.
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