21/9/2018 – Fore Coffee, a coffee startup that has been trending in Indonesia lately has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from early-stage investor East Ventures.
The coffeehouse launched its operations just last month in August as a specialty coffee startup that delivers the finest brew of coffee to its customers.
“We are leveraging from the network and expertise from our predecessor Otten, and we are equipped with machine and technology to deliver the finest quality coffee to our customer,” said Fore Coffee’s CEO Robin Boe.
It currently operates its first store in Otten Coffee Jakarta shop, which is located in Senopati No 77, South Jakarta and as of today serves 1,000 cups of coffee daily.
The company is also on its way to open its second outlet in Plaza Indonesia in October and aims to open more branches in both shopping malls and offices.
“We dream of the day where everyone has access to affordable specialty coffee close to them every day and we are excited that we are moving forward to that steadily,” added Robin.
East Ventures managing partner Wilson Cuaca believes that the popularity of food delivery services among Indonesians will make Fore Coffee a hit, similar to how the Chinese market has warmed up to their local Luckin Coffee.
“The Indonesian tech ecosystem has been moving fast with a lot of innovations that have changed our daily life, particularly the way consumers get their food. This sparks a new hypothesis within us which we want to proof quickly,” said Cuaca.
“Can we serve a new demand with a new bottom-up startup design that sits on new innovation in Indonesia? In China, Luckin Coffee answers that question.”
In fact, the Chinese startup was so well-received that it had become a unicorn after closing its Series A round earlier this year.
In any case, East Ventures hopes that its new incubated product will perform as well as its predecessors EV Hive and Warung Pintar.
Coworking space provider EV Hive had raised US$20 million in a Series A funding round led by SoftBank Ventures Korea, in what the startup said was one of the largest Series A rounds in Indonesia to date.
Meanwhile retail tech startup Warung Pintar recently had also raised another US$4 million round, backed by big regional investors including Two Temasek affiliates, Vertex Ventures and Pavilion Capital, as well as LINE Ventures.
Earlier this week, East Ventures announced a lead investor in loyalty startup Member.id. Last week, it joined a US$5 million pre-Series A funding for Singapore-based fintech startup Helicap.
