SINGAPORE-BASED martech startup Affable.ai has bagged US$2 million from Prime Venture Partners, Decacorn Capital and SGInnovate, which it plans to use to expand into international markets, particularly the US, to boost adoption of its influencer marketing platform.

Nisarg Shah, chief executive officer and co-founder of Affable.ai, said: "Prime brings a depth of experience in scaling global SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies, operational expertise, as well as a strong network that we can leverage during our growth phase and we are very excited to partner with them."

Founded in 2017 as part of Entrepreneur First, a programme catered to startup founders, Affable is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform that uses machine learning and Big Sata analytics to help brands and agencies find micro-influencers, manage campaigns and measure performance.

The fresh funding brings its total funding raised to US$2.8 million, from the above investors as well as Entrepreneur First and angel investors.

Affable is used by over 45 top brands and agencies, among them names such as Huawei, Pomelo and Dentsu, and tracks more than three million influencers across social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, the startup said.

The startup believes South-east Asia is "an ideal ground" for influencer marketing to "flourish", as a mobile-first region where the market is expected to reach US$2.59 billion by 2024. The industry is expected to reach US$15 billion globally by next year.

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The platform indexes social media users and identifies potential partnerships with influencers for brands, Affable said, adding that it is able to detect fake followers, discover follower interests and classify social media users based on brands, fan pages and the like.

"Affable's tech differentiation will transform the way brands and agencies interact with micro-influencers and celebrities, ensuring they get maximum ROI (return on investment) from their marketing campaigns," said Shripati Acharya, managing partner of Prime Venture Partners.

Debneel Mukherjee, managing partner of Decacorn Capital, said: "Decacorn believes that 'prime-time' has arrived in the AI (artificial intelligence) driven influencer marketing space to effectively monetise the hyper social behavioural changes in the post millennials... In order to help Affable scale beyond Asia into the holy grail of the USA we have ponied up in Affable to the fullest extent."