East Ventures Leads Series A Funding for “Coffee-Tech” Startup Morning

Startups coffee-tech "Morning" announced a series A funding round of $5 million (over 73,5 billion Rupiah) led by East Ventures. Previous investors zVentures (Razer's venture capital) and Wee Teng Wen (Lo & Behold Group), as well as new investor P9 Capital participated in this round.

Morning will use the fresh funds to develop and diversify its product offering, as well as expand Morning's presence globally. For information, the investment announcement was marked by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which took place at the Indonesia - Singapore Business Forum today (14/6) at the Hilton Singapore Orchard, Singapore.

Morning is a coffee technology company with a vision to make specialty coffee more accessible in the home environment. The IoT-powered Morning Machine uses precision brewing features combined with a recipe-driven ecosystem to produce each cup of coffee exactly the way the roaster wants it.

The Morning Machine experience is complemented by the Morning Marketplace, a platform featuring capsule coffee from the world's leading coffee roasters. This startup was founded in the middle of last year by Leon Foo (CEO) who has expertise in the coffee field.

“Coffee culture has grown rapidly around the world in the last decade. Coupled with the exploding demand for more convenient home coffee solutions, driven by the pandemic and the remote working trend. We believe that Morning is optimally positioned to capitalize on this trend," Foo said in an official statement.

Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Cuaca said, “We believe that the experience of enjoying good coffee is a combination of the best coffee beans, roasters, and the ability to deliver it on time. This investment will enhance Southeast Asian collaboration and showcase the SEA ecosystem to the global market by integrating the best Indonesian coffee beans with the convenience of Singapore-designed coffee technology and Morning machines.”

Since its official launch, Morning has sold thousands of its iconic IoT-enabled Morning Machines in nearly 30 countries. Its business scope will not only be in Singapore and Southeast Asia, but will be expanded to the UK in order to continue its global expansion over the next 12 to 18 months.

Morning provides a new experience in the form of an IoT ecosystem with recipes that affect certain beverage parameters that customers can use to brew cafe-quality coffee with one touch in their homes. Although practical, the company guarantees that quality is maintained. Currently, the Morning app has more than 1.000 roaster recipes developed by the Morning community of 60 leading coffee roasters.

Previously, in the East Ventures portfolio there was also a startup that played in a coffee retail outlet called ForeCoffee. Originally, Fore Coffee was an incubation project from one of East Ventures' portfolios, namely Otten's Robin Boe. Otten itself is a company that sells coffee equipment, such as grinders, espresso machines, and brewers.

Over time, Fore Coffee has now managed to have 110 outlets as of February 2022. The locations are spread across 18 metropolitan cities, such as Jabodetabek, Denpasar, Palembang, Yogyakarta, Malang, to Batam. It is also claimed that Fore Coffee has sold 5 million cups of coffee throughout 2021. One of its seasonal products, the Almond Cocoa Series, which was released at the end of November 2021, was recorded as the best-selling menu with sales of more than 300 thousand cups.