Launched in late 2017, UrBox is a digital gifting & loyalty platform that helps businesses integrate their reward or loyalty program with an ever-growing network of national and international gift suppliers/merchants. UrBox also connects brands with customers through multiple digital channels. Customers can receive the gift voucher instantly and store it on their app/phone and redeem at both offline and online store.
Starting out as a consulting agency to build loyalty programs by connecting merchants to big corporates in Vietnam, UrBox’s founders have experience working for reputable national corporations, and through their experience they have found that all of the customers’ rewards have been via manual processes: from manually dealing with each gift suppliers/merchants, printing out the cash vouchers, packing and sending the vouchers to customers. As such, the founding team had decided to start UrBox to transform the gifting & rewarding experience to the next level.
Up-to-date, UrBox has expanded their gifting acceptance with merchant network of hundreds of lifestyles brands and nearly 3,000 outlets across Vietnam, ranging from Dining & Drinking (Redsun, Golden Gate, Coffee Bean & Tealeaf, The Coffee House, Paris Baguette…), Shopping (7Eleven, Family Mart, Shop&Go, Klever Fruit, FPTshop); to Online (Shopee, Tiki, Now, Grab).
UrBox is serving more than 30 top corporates in different sectors from banking, telco, insurance to tech companies, including Timo Digital Banking, VPBank, Seabank, Viettel, Bao Viet & GrabReward program,... In August 2018, along with 79 other projects globally, UrBox was selected to participate in the 3-month accelerator program of K-Startup Grand Challenge which is sponsored by the Korean government.
This seed round funding is just a starting point for UrBox to become the one-stop reward/loyalty as a service solution. The investment from VinaCapital Ventures and VIISA will help UrBox strengthen their merchant; create synergies across companies, and provide UrBox with access to top talents; expand extensive connection with global tech companies to expand the business to other countries in Southeast Asia. Further, as B2B is their key focus, VinaCapital Ventures and Dragon Capital (VIISA’s founders) who have many years of operating investment in different sectors in Vietnam, especially in the largest listed and private companies, will help UrBox reach more potential and scalable partnerships opportunities. To reach that level, UrBox is looking for talent in many vacant positions in technology, marketing, partnerships, and business development.
“The experience in transition of customer service from offline to online for SMEs has been painfully labored, especially with larger enterprises. We believe that UrBox’s persistence in crafting a better solution for every new business, such as Urbox's API services, can resolve this problem for B2B clients. Through the Accelerator Program and follow-on investment, we support Urbox in their growth and working with their strategic investor, VinaCapital Ventures, who also believes in Urbox's mission and team quality”, shared by Mr. Hieu Vo, CFO at VIISA.
Global tech giants are creating synergetic businesses to support the growth of startup companies. If Amazon is creating a platform for millions of merchants to reach billions of customers, Paypal or Stripe are disruptive payment solutions for businesses. Urbox will play a critical role to facilitate businesses to focus strongly on building world-class products and customer experience.