Upmesh: Live commerce helps SMBs breakaway from larger competition

Two months after Upmesh raises Pre-Series A led by Monk’s Hill Ventures; Upmesh upholds their commitment to empower SMEs to transform and elevate their businesses with live commerce. Through constant product innovation and meticulous growth solutions, Upmesh has supported SMBs through their journey of business development, allowing them to expand and connect with their audience by presenting an authentic voice in the age of manicured appearances and manufactured information.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 25 March 2022 – Upmesh, the leading live commerce enabler in Southeast Asia, continues to further their mission of empowering SMEs to grow their businesses, helping individuals and SMBs break through the dominance of big platforms by establishing their own authentic identity in an era where public bias is overwhelmed by perfectly curated appearances.

Traditional e-commerce is efficient in recommending products via the algorithm knowing the superficial trust matrix (reviews, product search history) of consumers, however, it does not take into account old school branding, such as word of mouth, trust and brand reputation that is built over a long period of time. Live commerce is a straightforward evolution, where the discovery element pushes personalities to stake their reputation on the line and recommend good products to build an audience, As consumers’ choices reduce due to algorithms getting smarter, live commerce is the best of both worlds, with low barriers to entry, requiring little to no capital investment or preconceived fame except authenticity and a commitment of honesty to buyers.

Key players like Upmesh are continually inventing new ways to enhance live commerce, encouraging more SMBs and individuals to differentiate their offerings, levelling the playing field against larger competitor corporations with more market share and dollars.

One such product innovation would be the launch of Upmesh Live** – a live selling mobile application that allows sellers to create personalized overlays in their live streams without the need for any prior technical knowledge, allowing them to integrate customisable branded content such as customizable graphics, brand imagery and professional content tools within minutes. Sellers are now able to further achieve virality and engage with their communities on top of real-time order management provided by Upmesh.

“We want to bring more engagement to livestreams in Southeast Asia. Currently, on-screen animations and overlays are strictly available only to those with experience using studio solutions like OBS, making it inaccessible by the majority of streamers who are currently using mobile. By creating a companion streaming application for our live streaming systems, we’re able to enhance the appeal of live shopping”
– Wong Zi Yang, CEO and Co-Founder at Upmesh

SMB Case Study #1: MyShop

Yvonne, Founder of MyShop, has encountered multiple setbacks and traumatic personal experiences growing up. She experimented with live selling, encouraged by her husband. The business grew by leaps and bounds, allowing her to define her own authentic identity in the saturated fashion market, and become one of the top live sellers in Singapore. She’s known for reinventing her styles and constantly setting new trends, allowing her buyers to achieve fashionable styles without having to break the bank. Yvonne has launched her own range of products and has garnered loyal supporters in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, As a mother herself, she’s committed to inspiring women to feel beautiful even after marriage and childbirth.

SMB Case Study #2: Call Me Yayee

Yayee is an aspiring full-time live seller who started live commerce as a means to reach out to a larger audience and achieve freedom in her career. Proving that anyone can sell on Live, Yayee, a first-timer at using a live commerce system has witnessed a more than 40% increase in her revenue after just a week.

SMB Case Study #3: Signature Truck

Carmen, Founder of fashion label Signature Truck started her business at the age of only 17 after she completed secondary school. In the beginning, she exhausted various means to expand and secure her customer base, from participating in small brick-and-mortar bazaar events to large mall pop-ups. She decided to experiment with live selling in the hopes of reducing her overheads and increasing her audience reach and engagement. After successfully launching her live selling initiative, she has since witnessed up to a 300% increase in customer base, established her own office space and the business has also become financially sustainable. As live selling has now made it easier for the business to scale, she now aims to expand throughout the entire Malaysian market and channel the overhead savings to creating more bespoke designs for her customers.

**The Upmesh Live application is only compatible with Android 8.0 and above as well as ios 11.0 and above**

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Upmesh’s product provides e-commerce functions for merchants and enables them to leverage the power of community.

Sellers go live on social media platforms such as Facebook Live or Instagram Live
Upmesh captures orders through a merchant’s live stream comments and incentivises the buyers to share through discovery, giveaways and drip messaging
Upmesh is committed to constantly launching new engaging and interactive features that aim to enable live commerce merchants to reach their full sales and creative potential through multi-channel discovery and sharing to unlock value and virality

Upmesh also goes beyond just basic automation to being a sales tool to help merchants grow sales through its analytics to identify best selling items and patterns in buying behaviour as well as buyer loyalty programmes.

Ranging from mom-and-pop street shops selling on live streams to supplement foot traffic to specialised Live Commerce sellers moving thousands of SKUs a month, Upmesh is enabling trusted voices to be discovered by buyers.

About Upmesh

Founded in 2020, Upmesh is a live commerce enabler that helps online merchants using live commerce build communities and achieve virality. Merchants on social media can easily provide a seamless eCommerce checkout experience to their buyers. The Upmesh founding team is made up of experienced merchant acquirers, community managers and tech leaders. Upmesh’s mission is to re-introduce trust in the eCommerce experience in Southeast Asia by transforming the static buying and seller experience from a static page with anonymous and empty five-star ratings to a meaningful two-way interaction with trusted reviewers using the power of livestreaming.

As seen on CBInsights, TechCrunch and The Ken.