Tokopedia Reportedly Investing in SiCepat, Fast Consolidation Movement to Build “IaaS”

At the end of 2018, platform marketplace Tokopedia announces the acquisition funding 16 trillion Rupiah led by SoftBank Vision Fund and Alibaba Group. Co-Founder & CEO William Tanuwijaya said the capital will be used to realize the company's vision to become an "Infrastructure as a Service" retail business in Indonesia.

Simply put, Tokopedia wants to provide various infrastructures that can support the running of the buying and selling business online. They will build a warehouse that will be used as a distribution center and fulfillment of goods, of course equipped with technology. Including on the logistics side, they want to try to make various breakthroughs “smart logistics” to be more efficient.

“At first, if you wanted to buy banana chips in Aceh, you had to wait a few days, now it can be faster. It is as if banana chip sellers can have branches all over Indonesia,” William gave an example of the impact of IaaS which is being pursued.

Consolidation

Big vision is not built from scratch. What Tokopedia does is orchestrate the existing ecosystem, including collaborating with startups in related sectors. On an occasion last year William said that his party was in the process of investing in two logistics startups and one agriculture.

On the side agritech, widely reported that Tokopedia chose Sayurbox. Our resource person said that the company was indeed involved in its latest funding round. Now it's the logistics company's turn to get it. According to sources Deal Street Asia, Tokopedia has invested in SiCepat in a series A round with Kejora-Intervest and Barito Teknologi, worth US$50 million.

We tried to contact the relevant parties to get confirmation, but so far no one has disclosed the information.

Previously, PT Spirit Bambu Runcing (its shares are owned by one of the co-founder Tokopedia) together with Chinese service SF Express are also investing in local logistics companies Antheraja. Although it does not involve Tokopedia directly, this is considered a strategic step to strengthen the company's logistics elements in the future.

Smart logistics

There are many logistical problems that have not been resolved to accommodate the needs of the era E-commerce. Innovation is also trying to be intensified, including through initiatives "smart logistics". The concept tries to elaborate on the capabilities of technology to assist business processes effectively end-to-end. As is known, the logistics process consists of a combination of various functions, ranging from transportation, warehousing, packaging, distribution, storage, and information systems.

Big data, cloud computing, IoT, artificial intelligence, to RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) are applied to become components smart logistics. The hope is to bring efficiency and cost savings, ultimately to consumer satisfaction and trust in the online retail system itself. The great opportunity makes many startups present to work on related solutions, call it names like Waresix, Kargo Technologies, or Paxel.

Initiate independently

Neither SiCepat, Anteraja, nor Sayurbox actually have publicly stated that they are strategically partnering with Tokopedia. In fact, the service is also still open on a non-exclusive basis. SiCepat itself recently collaborated with Bukalapak to launch an automatic receipt feature.

If examined more deeply, service E-commerce indeed become the main driver of the birth of logistics innovation, because logistics itself is an important component in their business ecosystem. The speed of logistics can also be a plus as well as a differentiator between services E-commerce in terms of user satisfaction.

Tokopedia has invested in building a smart warehouse Branch Store which allows sellers to place their products in stock in available smart warehouses and the team will help handle incoming orders, package orders, and hand them over to delivery couriers. Currently, TokoBranch is only located in several big cities in Java, such as Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya.

Logistics strengthening is also carried out by players E-commerce others, for example JD.id, they even launched logistics strategy to provide differentiation with other services.

Bukalapak also uses a unique method. They take advantage of Partners scattered in various regions to become drop point. Sellers can entrust their shipments to the nearest Partner, including making payments, to then be collected collectively by the chosen logistics service. This method only works in the areas of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi.