Astro Announces Series A Funding of 387 Billion Rupiah

Startups online groceries concept quick-commerce Astro announced that it has raised a series A funding of $27 million or the equivalent of 387 billion Rupiah. This round was led by Accel and Sequoia Capital India. Also joined were the venture capitalists involved in previous investment, including AC Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Lightspeed, and Goodwater Capital.

A number angel investors also supports this funding, among others founder and senior executives from Traveloka, Ajaib, Meesho, OYO, Swiggy, and Udaan. Astro will immediately use the funds to expand its reach in Indonesia. In addition, it will also be used to increase human resources up to 3 times until the end of 2022.

“Astro adheres to the mission to improve the quality of life of people in Indonesia by providing convenience for shopping for their daily needs. Our Astronauts [as partners] are ready to deliver groceries and essentials within 15 minutes so you can spend time, energy and money on other things,” Astro Co-Founder & CEO Vincent Tjendra.

Since launching in September 2021, , Astro has established 15+ hub throughout Jakarta with 1.500+ product SKUs, ranging from food, vegetables, meat, and other daily necessities. The Astro application itself has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people on the Google Playstore. Hub this is an important infrastructure for Astro, because the concept quick-commerce they promise the delivery process is a maximum of 15 minutes after the order is completed -- even for product returns if it doesn't fit.

Race to be online groceries front

Previously in joint interview DailySocial.id, Vincent says, business model quick commerce gives Astro its own competitive advantage, including offering convenience and speed through instant delivery, shops online which is open 24 hours a day, to a wide variety of products to meet customer needs.

Astro uses to take advantage of existence 'dark stores' as distribution centers located at various points to enjoy instant delivery services. Astro utilizes a logistics fleet in-house to accommodate all orders. The set shipping cost per order is IDR 15 thousand and the minimum transaction is IDR 50 thousand.

According to the data submitted, currently in Indonesia the retail sector for foodstuffs has a fairly low penetration, which is around 0,4% compared to the market penetration. E-commerce which reaches 10%. However, the pandemic condition is widely seen as an opportunity for online groceries to form a market. According to research, this sector is projected to grow to a value of $6 billion in 2025.

In Indonesia alone, a number of players also provide similar services, here are some of them whose applications are ranked top on Google Play in the shopping category (as of 02 February 2022). This rating fluctuates, indicating the level of growth from the download and use of related applications.

Outside of applications that directly standalone bring service Grocery, actually a number of local tech giants are also getting serious there. For example, what Blibli did by presenting BlibliMart. Not only that, not long ago they take corporate action by acquiring a majority stake in the company Ranch Market – which is planned to be integrated to strengthen the line online groceries they.

Other startups also continue to get significant support from investors, considering the market is still very “green” to work on. Earlier this year KedaiSayur just received fresh funding from its parent company Triputra Group. A number of ex-Tanihubs also launched JaPang at the end of the year to provide services Grocery which focuses on serving markets outside Java.

Meanwhile, last year, apart from Astro, a number of other startups received funding from investors, namely Segari (Series A), Dropezy (Series A), Pasarnow (Series A), Segari (Series A), Titipku (Pre-Series A), HappyFresh (Series A), Series D), and Sayurbox (Series B).

"There are some undeniable things in E-commerce, one of which is that consumers always want faster delivery, a wider variety of choices, and appropriate pricing. Model quick-commerce answer all these needs. With the rapid growth of the market in Indonesia, especially in the online groceries, this certainly opens up a huge market opportunity that deserves to be explored [...],” said Sequoia India VP Aakash Kapoor.