Garena has announced that has rebranded to Sea Ltd. This comes after the company successfully raised some $550 million (about RM2.3 billion) in funding to expand efforts in Indonesia.
Most Malaysians would be familiar with Garena from its work publishing western games in the southeast Asia region. This includes the immensely popular League of Legends and FIFA Online 3. However, the startup also own e-commerce site Shopee and online payment service AirPay.
Sea is said to be preparing to use its new funds to expand Shopee operations in Indonesia, although there are few details about the effort. Still, the new round of funding includes GDP Ventures – a company owned by Martin Hartono, the son of Indonesia’s richest man. It now also backed by JG Summit Holdings Inc., founded by Philippine billionaire John Gokongwei
Goldman Sachs is rumoured to be preparing to launch an initial public offering for Sea in the US; where it could potentially raise as much as $1 billion (RM4.3 billion).
For the most part, Sea will still be retaining the Garena name for its game publishing efforts. Therefore, not much will have changed as a result of this change of branding.
[Source: Bloomberg]
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