Hong Kong-headquartered retail technology company Yo-ren has secured US$11 million in a funding round it plans to use to expand into Thailand and Malaysia.
Yo-ren designs, develops, and operates smart phone-based customer management programs and provides retailers with social network services, e-commerce website planning and operations, collects user data and performs data analysis, as well as developing market strategies based on user characteristics.
The company’s current clients include Japanese convenience store chain Lawson.
Yo-ren is also investing in AI technology as part of an agenda to merge digital and physical store spaces, possibly extending as far as allowing consumers to buy clothing in unstaffed stores, in similar fashion to Amazon Go.
“We foresee the optimal use of digital environments as a service, and big data gathered from increasingly connected networks as critical up-and-coming managerial problems,” Yo-ren wrote in a statement.
Investors in the latest Yo-ren funding round included Lawson and T-Gaia Corporation.