Singapore-based Supermom helps parenting brands navigate a post-cookie world businessroundups.org

Super mom, a parenting platform with 20 million users in six Southeast Asian countries, offers parents price comparisons, communities and the chance to earn money by completing surveys. For brands, it gives them a way to conduct market research and gather first-hand data, which is important as marketers prepare for a post-cookie world.

The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised an oversubscribed $8 million SGD (approximately $6 million USD) Series A led by Qualgro, with participation from AC Ventures. Supermom currently has a presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand and plans to expand into more markets. More than 200 consumer brands use Supermom for marketing research, including Kimberly Clark, Procter & Gamble and Philips.

Founded by Joan Ong, Luke Lim, Lynn Yeoh and Rebecca Koh, Supermom originally started as a platform in 2013 for community groups and in-person events. “Motherhood is quite a lonely journey and I wanted to support other parents,” Ong said. The next five years were dominated by Singapore. In 2019, Supermom’s team decided they wanted to expand across Southeast Asia, so they shifted their focus from community events to digital marketing.

Supermom’s market research platform for businesses allows brands to conduct market tests with highly targeted groups of people. The backend tracks the demographics of parents in the database, including aggregated data about their children’s ages, occupations, and interests. In addition to writing reviews or participating in surveys, parents can apply through Supermom to become brand ambassadors, and when they do, brands can see how many followers they have on social media and what groups they’re in.

Lim says quantitative surveys of about 1,000 people usually take months to complete, but can be done in under an hour through Supermom. Surveys can be launched simultaneously in six countries, with specific users invited to complete them. To set up a survey, brands select a country and then filter by specific demographics, such as the age of children. Supermom’s platform also guides them in writing questions.

In addition to their own surveys, brands also get information such as brand indexing, or a ranking of which brands are most trusted by consumers. That data can be broken down by demographics. For example, researchers can see if a brand is used by 50% of mothers over the age of 30, and then narrow that down by disposable income level.

Supermom will use the new funding for its data and product capabilities and expansion in Southeast Asia.

“As companies all move into a cookie-free world, direct access to consumers is very important,” says Ong. “Because they can no longer retarget and use cookies to target consumers. So with the millions of users we have, we help many brands get this critical first-party data so they can actually access their audience.”

In a statement on the funding, Qualgro general partner Weisheng Neo said: “We recognize the current gap in brands’ access to reliable, secure parental data, a large and growing customer segment. For brands, the Supermom platform will be a wealth of insights and first-party data activation.”