GudangAda Closes Series B Funding Round of 1,49 Trillion Rupiah

Platform B2B marketplaces For FMCG, GudangAda has again pocketed an investment of $100 million or around 1,49 trillion rupiah. This investment is a series B funding round led by Asia Partners and Falcon Edge.

As for Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC Ventures, and Wavemake Partners back to participate on this funding. According to GudangAda, this investment has exceeded the initial target to be raised, which was $75 million. With the addition of new funding, GudangAda has now raised a total investment of up to $135 million.

Falcon Edge Co-Founder Navroz D. Udwadia said, over the years investing in a number of categories marketplace, the figure of Stevensang is considered to have the ability to execute business in a short time. Therefore, he is optimistic that GudangAda will become marketplace biggest for Indonesian MSMEs

"With the research and conversations we have with principals, wholesalers and retailers, we believe in return on investment (ROI) GudangAda and the benefits it offers to the entire ecosystem," he said.

Strengthening business in the supply chain

Founder and CEO of GudangAda Stevensang said the company is now in the right position to empower all players in the Indonesian supply chain ecosystem, from producers, distributors, wholesalers, to retailers. GudangAda says its service has been used by nearly half a million users in more than 500 cities tier 1 to tier 3 with a comprehensive monetization model and a complete ecosystem.

"We will enlarge the GudangAda team and strengthen our service ecosystem from logistics, payment systems (POS/SaaS), marketing, data, to financial services. We will also strengthen our position by developing artificial intelligence to offer the best personalized services to SME traders ," he said in an official statement.

Meanwhile, the CFO of GudangAda, JJ Ang, said that the great interest of investors this time was proof of GudangAda's success in building a platform with efficient capital and reaping growth. GudangAda said that it had started monetizing its business since the first quarter of 2020.

GudangAda claims to be one of the platform B2Bmarketplace with the fastest growth and most productive capital in Southeast Asia. Based on his records, GudangAda pocketed a Net Merchandise Value (NMV) of $6 billion in less than three years.

Meanwhile, the accumulated investment value is less than $35 million with a capital efficiency ratio of 170 times. Then, the GudangAda Logistik service has been recorded to have doubled every two months since it launched for the first time in mid-2020.

Applying business concepts asset-light and capital-efficient, GudangAda has collaborated with vehicle and warehouse business owners, including with UMKM members of GudangAda. Apart from this collaboration, GudangAda also offers a dynamic transportation and warehouse management service system to make it easier for partners to digitize their business.

GudangAda offers one-stop solution SMEs to facilitate efficient access to various products. By targeting the FMCG sector, GudangAda has expanded its product categories to include medicines, pharmaceuticals, and household appliances. Since the expansion of this category, GudangAda has experienced an increase in transactions from tens of thousands of MSMEs.

Currently, GudangAda has officially partnered with more than 65 principals, both local, national and multinational. One of these investments is used to expand cooperation with more principals.

MSMEs as market share

As is known, the number of MSME actors in Indonesia is estimated to reach more than 65 million as of 2020. With the acceleration of digital acceleration last year, the report E-commerceenablers SIRCLO revealed that online retailers are expected to contribute 24% in 2022. In its report, sales on digital channels can be maximized, especially by FMCG brands that market everyday products.

Services B2B marketplace such as GudangAda allows these MSME actors to get product stock more efficiently.

Actually, GudangAda is not the only one who does this. Some other players like Ula also work on the existing potential. Besides that with a different approach, the giants online marketplace promote O2O strategies to make it easier for small traders to access various products -- for example, by Mitra Bukalapak or Mitra Tokopedia.

Digitizing the process, in the long term, also provides the potential for MSMEs to gain more benefits, including in terms of finance. One of the scenarios that has begun to be promoted is that recorded transaction data can be used as a credit scoring variable to help MSME actors gain access to capital financing. So that it will support their efforts to increase the capability and size of the business they are starting.