Malaysian marketplace HOMA secures funding, eyes nationwide expansion

HOMA2U (HOMA), a Malaysian online-to-offline marketplace for building materials and home furnishing products, announced raising 2.4 million ringgit ($567,000) in a series of funding from investors including private equity firm Warisan Quantum Management.

Founded in 2017, HOMA is a new retail platform that offers building material and home finishing products that focus on sustainability at bargains.

As Malaysia’s first full-fledged overstock platform for home improvement, HOMA looks towards prioritising the sustainability factors in their day-to-day business operations to reduce the environmental impact.

“Sustainability has become a trend in home renovation and design. When considering sustainability, trending items are not just about what is fashionable, it’s also about doing the most for our environment,” said HOMA founder Pennie Lim.

“By championing the notion of reducing, reuse and repurpose, our strategy includes acquiring building materials and interior finishes products from unused construction materials, discarded materials and overstock markets.”

HOMA is a Cradle Fund’s Coach & Grow Programme Cohort 5 Batch (CGP5) Alumni and a nominee for Women Entrepreneur of the Year for CGP5 Cohort. HOMA was also part of the SITEC Selangor Accelerator Programme Alumni where they emerged as Top 5 startups in Cohort 1 (RM6,000 cash prize won) and top 10 finalist for Junior Chamber International Creative Young Entrepreneur Award (JCI CYEA) in 2019.

Prior to the latest funding, ScaleUp Malaysia with investment partner Quest Ventures Pte Ltd invested via in HOME via the ScaleUp Malaysia’s Accelerator programme, where the startup is one of the top 10 startups from the Cohort 2 batch.

HOMA said it is working towards building mobile pop-up stores branded as Yellow Box to cater to their offline-online customer needs seamlessly.

Aimed to expand to 10 locations (within Malaysia) with the Yellow Box concept, it will bring their products showcase closer to the customers by using affiliate partnerships and utilising partner’s physical outlet space to place the Yellow Boxes such as furniture outlets and hardware stores, carrying up to 1,000 sku of products.