The story of the CEO of eFishery and Super in Attracting Investors, Despite His Business in the "Niche Market"

In the event session "TechinAsia Conference 2022", Co-Founder & CEO of eFisery Gibran Huzaifah and Co-Founder & CEO of Super Steven Wongsoredjo said, when the current difficult situation is important for the company to return to fundamental and leverage existing resources to produce products that are relevant to users.

Secondly, founder The person also said that he had experienced difficulties when he first started building a business and convinced investors to provide funding for their startup.

Difficulty convincing investors at the beginning

As eentrepreneur Gibran is well aware that when building a business, the most important thing to pay attention to is profit. As a sector targeting platform aqua culture, it is still difficult for companies to get investment from venture capitalists.

When service E-commerce and on-demand used to be a prima donna, not so with the products developed by eFishery.

"We are lucky enough not to have to compete with the sector that is considered the sexiest and most in demand by investors. Thus, we rely on all available to focus on products and provide good service to target users," said Gibran.

The same thing happened to Steven, when they first started building Super, they focused on their initial mission, which was to target rural areas. Although he is confident that there are opportunities to target rural areas, this is not the case with investors.

"From the start I always had the belief that rural areas had great opportunities," said Steven.

Claiming as underdog, Steven then use the funds they have as well as possible. Fundraising activities are also not the focus of Steven and the team, so they don't do it very often fundraising. These activities are carried out when the company has reached milestone.

It is noted that Super has already pocketed funding series C of $70 million (over 1 trillion Rupiah) led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a Silicon Valley-based VC. Other participating investors include Insignia Ventures Partners, SoftBank Ventures Asia, DST Global Partners, Amasia, B Capital, and TNB Aura.

Similar to Super, eFishery is also in stages series C. The fresh fund was raised by them earlier this year worth $90 million (over 1,2 trillion Rupiah) led by Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Sequoia Capital India, with the participation of previous investors, namely Northstar Group, Go-Ventures, Aqua- Spark, and Wavemaker Partners.

"From the start we were consistent with the company's mission. We took the time to see fundamental business, focus on products that we can provide to loyal target users, for us that is the best way to survive," said Gibran.

Focus on business and target users

Term "TechWinter"Startup activists are getting louder and louder. This condition also means that it is difficult to get capital from investors. Previously, many investors made investments easily and focused on growth, now the situation has changed.

Investors are also starting to think about profitability. If it used to be growth and money-burning activities are the focus, now when talking to investors, what is the startup strategy to get revenue or profit which then becomes their priority.

Gibran and Steven feel this is true. In the past, when they were still doing fundraising in the early stages, most investors wanted startups to focus on growth. Even willing to add their funding, for the sake of growth. Now they are starting to see growth is no longer the focus of investors but more on profitability.

In order for startups to survive during these difficult times, Gibran gave suggestions to focus on the business and target users. Meanwhile, for Steven, the best way to survive when capital is hard to come by is to build fundamentals before finally being in a cycle of fundraising.

"I see that investors are now being more careful in making investments. However, I see that the best companies will be born from the current ecosystem," said Steven.