27/5/2019 – Kedai Sayur, which translates to vegetable kiosk in Indonesian, has successfully secured a seed funding round of US$1.3 million led by early-stage venture fund East Ventures.
Adrian Hernanto, CEO of Kedai Sayur revealed that this fresh funding will be used to expand its partner network and work with more vegetable hawkers.
“Through our extensive network and use of technology, we believe we can empower the market for fresh products and prove that any level of economic population, including vegetable growers, can benefit from technological inclusion,” he explained.
Founded in late 2018, Kedai Sayur is based on a network of daily produce distribution. The startup partners with farmers and uses technology to facilitate distribution of fresh produce, including vegetables, meat, and spices to hawkers.
This breaks the complexity associated with supply chain of fresh produce, which in Indonesia has to go through a number of middlemen before reaching customers, multiplying the product price, and leaving hawkers with low-quality products and low-profit margin.
Vegetable hawkers who joined Kedai Sayur as its partner are known as Mitra Sayur and can get access to these fresh produces in one-click through the Kedai Sayur app and pick them up from the closest drop-off points.
Besides, the company also offers its partners a unique delivery vehicle called Si Komo (which is short for Kedai on Mobile) that helps them reach their customers seamlessly.
The uniquely designed vehicle can even be transformed and used for other services like package delivery or food vendor, which will allow them to have additional income other than selling fresh produce only.
On the other hand, Kedai Sayur also offers financing programs for partners who have limited capital to purchase the vehicle.
Until today, Kedai Sayur claims to have over 2,000 vegetable hawkers as it partners in Greater Jakarta area and the number continues to grow by 60 percent every month.
It adds that 80 percent of the partners actively sell their products and that the company’s gross merchandise value (GMV) has grown by 5x in the last four months.
East Ventures Managing Partner Wilson Cuaca said, “Kedai Sayur fits into two of East Ventures hypothesis. The first one, technology inclusion to upgrade the undeserved merchant accessing technology and second, improvement of Indonesia supply chain.”
“There is local wisdom that helps traditional on-demand vegetable hawker to exist for so long and we want to preserve that culture with a touch of technology.”
The funding for Kedai Sayur comes months after East Ventures exited its investment in agritech portfolio company Limakilo, which was acquired by another portfolio company Warung Pintar.
Indonesian ecommerce unicorn Tokopedia, which counts East Ventures as its early investor, is also looking to expand into the agritech sector and is learnt to be in talks to acquire local startup Sayurbox.
