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- 🤯 $21M Raised, and Every Layer Was Rented
🤯 $21M Raised, and Every Layer Was Rented
How Raena raised $21M on a fast-growing Indonesian reseller network, then shut down owning none of the supply, audience or checkout it ran on.
Admond Lee
September 06, 2026
P.S. Syfe wanted a room full of its exact customers, so we built one. 177 founders applied, we turned 70 away, and 53 were in the room.
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
🇻🇳 A multi-million dollar deal in Vietnam died the morning of signing. The Vietnamese side asked for one small extra. The Western team read it as bad faith and walked away.
In Vietnam that ask is common. It's the chairman showing his team he won. Stefano Pellegrino watched that deal die, then warned a later American team it was coming. The ask came exactly as he'd said, and they smiled and signed.
Stefano shared this story at our Beyond Runway masterclass last month. His biggest lesson from opening 4 SEA markets: only enter a market that pulls you in. The best signal he's seen is an existing customer asking you to serve them there.
📘 If you're expanding overseas, read his book Mind The Gap before your first deal there (thank me later).
P.S. Use this code (MTG20) for 20% off on Wiley, worldwide, till end 2026.
Today's story is about a beauty startup that raised $21M building a beauty reseller network across Indonesia — and never owned a single piece of what made it work. Let's get to it! 🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → Raena
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Confused a pandemic tailwind with product-market fit
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Every rented layer becomes a competitor's entry point
🔗 The Runway Insights → Why adding more AI agents makes your team slower
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → StoreHub secures an undisclosed investment from Hashed-backed ShardLab to build merchant rewards and payments products
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: Raena
🚀 The Rise of Raena
🇸🇬 Founded by Sreejita Deb (CEO) in 2018 and joined months later by Guo Xing Lim (COO), Raena was a Singapore-based, Indonesia-focused beauty social commerce platform that helped micro-entrepreneurs sell curated global beauty products with zero inventory.
🕺🏻🕺🏻 Founders’ Story
Sreejita Deb spent years at Google, Amazon, and InMobi before doing her MBA at Harvard and running growth at Flyrobe, an Indian fashion rental startup.
In 2018, she spotted a structural gap → Southeast Asian influencers had massive audiences but no way to turn them into consumer brands. So she set up the company in Singapore, and picked Indonesia over her native India because women there spent twice as much on beauty and lived on Instagram.
🤝🏻 In early 2019, she recruited Guo Xing Lim from Alibaba via a LinkedIn ad. He'd done 4 years at P&G and knew supply chains cold.
The Problem — 💄 Southeast Asian influencers had built massive followings but had no way to monetise them into their own consumer brands.
They lacked capital, manufacturing partners, product-development know-how, and distribution.
International beauty brands wanted to enter Indonesia's ~$20 billion market but had no local partners in Tier 2/3 cities.
Resellers had to block capital upfront under the old wholesale model — brutal in a category like beauty.
The Solution — 🛍️ Raena built a zero-inventory dropshipping platform for micro-entrepreneurs, with a curated catalogue of 250+ beauty brands from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and the US.
No upfront capital, no minimum order quantities, no registration fees for resellers.
Raena handled warehousing, packing, and last-mile delivery direct to end consumers.
Resellers kept 60% of every completed sale, selling via TikTok Shop, Shopee, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
🇮🇩💄 In short, Raena was Indonesia's zero-inventory beauty wholesaler for the Instagram and TikTok generation.
 Sreejita Deb (Founder & CEO of Raena) | ⚠️ Raena's first act didn't work the way anyone expected. They started as an influencer brand incubator — pairing creators with factories in India, China, Japan, and Korea to launch their own products. The first drop, a calming balm with Indonesian child-influencer account Moonella and Family, went live in June 2019 after just 5 weeks. |
A month later, Raena raised $1.82 million (Seed) led by BEENEXT.
🤔🤔🤔 But the customers had other ideas.
By 2020, Raena realised that ~70% of product sales weren't coming from end fans — they were coming from customers buying in bulk to resell. So they pivoted hard from influencer brands to a B2B2C dropshipping platform. Timing was perfect — COVID lockdowns had killed offline retail, everyone wanted a side hustle, and skincare demand was booming.
📈 Revenue reportedly grew 50x between January and December 2020.
💰 In Feb 2021, they closed a $9 million Series A co-led by Alpha Wave Incubation and Alpha JWC Ventures. By January 2022, they added another $10 million with AC Ventures, Alto Partners, and Alfamart — bringing total funding to ~$21 million at a reported ~$81 million valuation.
🔥 At its peak, Raena:
claimed 300,000+ registered users across Indonesia — its own goodbye post counted 45,000+ entrepreneurs
grew the catalogue from 250+ brands in 2022 to 600+ by the end, with 9 exclusive global deals announced in 2022
reported revenue 3x annually from 2020 to 2022
ran Bimbel Raena seller-training programs to turn everyday women into "beautypreneurs"
was backed by BEENEXT, Alpha Wave, Alpha JWC, AC Ventures, and Alfamart
On paper, Raena looked untouchable in Indonesian beauty commerce.
📉 The Fall of Raena
But behind the 300,000-user headline, the model was more fragile than it looked.
Raena's whole pitch to resellers was that anyone could sell global beauty products with no money down. That was very good at getting people to sign up. But it was never the same thing as getting them to sell.
📌 Here’s what happened to Raena:
💄 From influencer studio to reseller army
13 Jun 2019 — 💧 Launched their first influencer product, a calming balm with Indonesian child-influencer account Moonella and Family. Concept to shelf in 5 weeks.
24 Jul 2019 — 💰 Raised $1.82M (Seed) led by BEENEXT, with Beenos, Strive, and angels Shailesh Rao and Sanjay Nath.
2020 — 🔄 Discovered that ~70% of product sales were coming from bulk-buying resellers. Pivoted from influencer-brand incubator to B2B2C dropshipping platform. Revenue reportedly grew 50x across the year.
25 Feb 2021 — 💰 Raised $9M (Series A) co-led by Alpha Wave Incubation and Alpha JWC Ventures. Reported 1,500+ resellers with 60% 6-month retention.
Jun 2021 — 👥 Grew to 10,000+ resellers, but only 45%+ were classified as active. The gap between registered and active would keep widening.
🥊 Then the numbers stopped telling the same story
Jan 2022 — 💰 Closed a $10M Series A extension with AC Ventures, Alto Partners, and Alfamart.
Total funding: ~$21M at a reported ~$81M valuation. It would be Raena's last institutional round.
18 Aug 2022 — 🏔️ Told media it had 300,000+ registered users, 250+ brands, and exclusive distribution for 9 global brands.
2024 — ⚔️🚨🚨🚨 Shopee and TikTok Shop aggressively pushed into the exact Tier 2/3 Indonesian cities Raena's resellers depended on.
Direct-brand storefronts, platform subsidies, and free shipping meant consumers could buy the same serum cheaper — direct from the brand.
7 Feb 2025 — 📰 DealStreetAsia reported that Raena was shutting down after 6 years and ~$21M raised.
11 Feb 2025 — 🙏🏻 Raena posted its farewell on Instagram, deactivated the app, and cited "unprecedented macro economic conditions" on LinkedIn.
The goodbye post counted 45,000+ entrepreneurs and 600+ brands since 2019.
🩸 Raena never ran out of demand.
What it never had was sellers who kept selling — of 10,000 resellers in June 2021, only about 45% were active. Its showcase seller had 83,000 Shopee followers; the average one made $300 a month. Zero inventory removed the cost of starting. It did nothing about the hard part — finding the customer.
Then, in 2024, Shopee and TikTok Shop pushed into the same towns. A reseller's whole job was being the cheapest way to buy a Korean serum in a small Indonesian city. That job stopped existing.
In February 2025, after 6 years and $21M, Raena switched off the app and thanked the sellers.
Want to learn more about Raena’s downfall?
Social commerce platform Raena shuts down after 6 years of operations
Singapore-based Raena gets $9M Series A for its pivot to skincare and beauty-focused social commerce
Raena is an entry point for dropshipping beauty products in Indonesia (Startup Stories)
5 Tahun Berdiri, Platform E-commerce Raena Tutup Operasional
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Confused a pandemic tailwind with product-market fit
Whereas the influencer number is limited, there could be millions of resellers we could tap into.
In 2020, Raena noticed ~70% of sales came from customers buying in bulk to resell. So they pivoted the whole company toward them.
🤫 They were arbitraging a temporary structural gap: global brands hadn't built direct distribution into Tier 2/3 Indonesian cities.
Raena raised $9M (Series A) in Feb 2021 and another $10M extension in Jan 2022 on top of that misdiagnosis.
When that structural gap eventually closed, Raena's reason to exist went with it.
Mistake 2: Scaled a middleman instead of building moats
Raena's "asset-light" model meant every layer of the stack was rented:
Fulfilment via Shipper
Audience on Instagram and TikTok
Transactions on Shopee and Tokopedia
Brands: in August 2022, only 9 of 250+ were exclusive, leaving most of the business exposed to products available elsewhere
💸 With the $9M Series A closing on 25 Feb 2021 and a $10M extension in Jan 2022, the founders had a window to deepen exclusive distribution, build private-label products, or acquire captive brand assets.
Visible spend went toward headcount (15 to ~70 in months) and the Bimbel training programme. Neither a private-label line nor a major exclusivity push ever surfaced publicly.
Being asset-light kept things cheap to scale. But when Shopee and TikTok Shop later arrived with heavy platform subsidies, Raena did not own the social audience, marketplace traffic, or end-customer relationship.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Diagnose why customers exist before scaling to serve them
Raena saw 70% of sales come from resellers and rebuilt the whole company around them. 🤔
But those resellers existed only because global brands hadn't reached Tier 2/3 Indonesia yet — and more than half had already gone inactive while that gap was still wide open.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
A behaviour signal becomes a strategy signal only when you can explain why it will persist for years, not months.
If your customers exist because a temporary gap made them possible, your real job is to build something durable before that gap closes.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🔬 Run a "why us, why now, why still" audit before a big pivot
Why do these customers exist? Is it a structural gap (durable) or a temporary friction (perishable)?
What has to stay true for 3–5 years for them to keep needing you?
Which player (brand, platform, or regulator) could remove that need with one product decision?
If you can't answer all 3 sharply, delay the pivot before you delay layoffs.
📈 Track "shock-adjusted" retention separately
Cohort your customers by acquisition period: pre-shock, during-shock, post-shock (COVID, subsidy war, regulatory change).
Use Amplitude or a simple Google Sheet to compare 90-day and 180-day retention across those cohorts.
If post-shock cohorts churn 40%+ faster than pre-shock ones, your growth was borrowed. Fund the diagnosis before you fund more headcount.
Lesson 2: Every rented layer becomes a competitor's entry point
Raena ran an asset-light model.
🏗️ With only 9 of 250+ brands exclusive in 2022, most of the catalogue could be found elsewhere. When Shopee and TikTok Shop pushed in with subsidies, Raena owned nothing that couldn't be undercut.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
Capital efficiency is not the same as strategic strength. Ask which layer you rent that a well-funded competitor could rent tomorrow.
In marketplace businesses, exclusive supply, private label, or proprietary distribution are the only things that don't evaporate when subsidised competition arrives.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🔒 Set an exclusivity ratio target and defend it
Track (# exclusive SKUs) ÷ (# total SKUs). For beauty social commerce in Indonesia, aim for 20%+ within 12 months of Series A.
Look at how established Indonesian beauty players like Sociolla operate — which layers do they own that a subsidised platform can't easily undercut?
If exclusivity stays below 10% while headcount doubles, you're scaling size before defensibility.
Lesson 3: Attractive markets attract deep-pocketed attackers
Deb picked Indonesia over her native India because beauty spend and Instagram usage were higher there. The same demand density that pulled Raena in later pulled Shopee and TikTok Shop into the exact Tier 2/3 cities that were meant to be Raena's moat.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
Every metric you use to justify a market is also a metric a super-app uses to plan its next expansion. Read them both ways.
In Southeast Asia, dense consumer demand plus high mobile engagement equals a super-app battleground within 3 years. Model that arrival before you raise on the demand story.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🎯 Add a "super-app arrival" clock to your market plan
List the 3–5 largest regional platforms relevant to your category: Shopee, Tokopedia, TikTok Shop, Grab, Gojek, Lazada.
For each, ask: what would make them enter this category, and are we already showing that signal?
Read Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory for a lens on platform dynamics.
If your traction is their acquisition thesis, you're proving their expansion case for them — for free.
🔗 The Runway Insights
Why adding more AI agents makes your team slower (Read)
The harness, the horse, or the hay (Read)
One year as a solopreneur (Read)
You are not a model. Don't price per token. (Read)
The channel that pays you to use it (Read)
65% of startups die from co-founder conflict. Julian Weisser on the 6 questions people actually ask about going solo (Read)
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
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That’s all for today
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope you’ve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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