Kuala Lumpur, May 2 – Popular Malaysian instant booking platform, VMO Rocks Sdn Bhd (VMO) rocks its first successful equity crowdfunding campaign, raising a total of RM500,000 and paving the way to advance the business beyond its current features.
VMO raised a total of RM250,000 through equity crowdfunding platform CrowdPlus.asia in just four days, making it the eighth successful CrowdPlus.asia campaign so far. The remaining RM250,000 was raised from a co-investment deal with Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd.
VMO made its official debut in March 2016, offering Malaysians the ability to book event venues and services instantly via www.vmo.rocks. VMO aims to revolutionise the way people discover, compare and book event spaces. The online events platform matches users, whether personal or corporate, with the right venue for their event.
“The successful campaign one year after VMO’s establishment boosted VMO’s credibility as a viable business in a new frontier for investment in this region,” said VMO’s Chief Eventgelist, Vincent Kok.
“In the span of four days, from March 20, 2017, 13 public investors participated in the campaign and took us to our target. In fact, we were slightly oversubscribed before we could end the campaign,” he added. VMO offered 14.3% equity to its investors.
“We are particularly excited that the equity crowdfunding campaign via CrowdPlus.asia was so successful and we are now laying the foundation for market expansion, advertising and marketing efforts, as well as supporting tech development,” Kok continued.
“At the moment, we are only scratching the surface. We still have a lot of room to grow and a lot of work to be done,” said Kok.
VMO intends to further expand its business in Klang Valley, Penang, Ipoh, Malacca and Johor Bahru to 1,500 establishments from its current listing of 900 establishments.
Andrew Tan, Chief Executive Officer of CrowdPlus.asia, sees VMO as a business model that is highly scalable and look forward to their expansion plans.
“There are many underutilised facilities and event spaces in Malaysia where owners simply do not have the right channel to market themselves effectively. VMO’s brilliant and effective platform offers free listing for space owners, at the same time gaining access to thousands of users who are constantly searching,” said Tan.
In support of the co-investment deal, Cradle Fund’s Chief Investment officer, Juliana Jan said, “Cradle has chosen to support VMO in its efforts to bridge the gap between potential customers and venue owners as the nature of VMO’s business is viable for the F&B industry in Malaysia,”
“It is also a new and unchartered territory to help boost the ecosystem for Malaysian tech start-ups,” she added.
According to Kok, at the end of December 2016, VMO received RM39 million in inquiry value compared to RM9.5 million in 2015. The value of bookings also increased from RM223,000 in 2015 to RM1.19 million in 2016, a growth of more than five times.