From Social Commerce to Online Grocery, Pasarnow Books 47 Billion Rupiah Initial Funding

Starting from the platform social commerce, Jamannow startup now strengthens service online groceries "Pasarnow". Business model shift (pivots) This was welcomed by investors with the announcement of an initial funding of $3,3 million or the equivalent of 47 billion Rupiah. This round was led by East Ventures with the participation of SMDV, Skystar Capital, Amand Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and several angel investors.

This startup established since 2019 by James Rijanto, Donald Wono, and Cindy Ozzie. Now their main focus is simplifying the supply chain in the fresh food sector and offering quality fresh food products to customers through the platform multi-channel. Approach multi-channel enabling them to embrace both B2B and B2C sectors at the same time. Every channel offer different prices, promotions and key features to meet customer specific needs.

"Ensuring the freshness of products when they arrive at customers is a big challenge for businesses in the fresh food sector. Food products such as fruits, vegetables, and frozen meats are perishable, thus requiring fast delivery with well-controlled temperature control, and ultimately causing high logistics costs," said Pasarnow Co-founder & CEO James Rijanto.

"That's why Pasarnow invests a lot in technology and operational infrastructure to solve this problem. In addition, the platform multi-channel Pasarnow helps us achieve faster economies of scale and create greater efficiencies in our operations."

In the process of working, the operating system in backend collect order history to generate market demand predictions, so more than 1.000 partner farmers and suppliers can better plan and optimize their harvest schedules. That way, they can offer customers high quality and fresh ingredients at the best prices and minimize the amount of wasted fresh ingredients.

Currently Pasarnow operates in Greater Jakarta and Bandung with more than 100 employees and 200 daily workers and driver partners.

The fresh funds raised will be used by Pasarnow to expand into new cities, recruit talent, improve its data and technology infrastructure and build micro warehouses, Frontline Mini Hubs (FMH). To complete 10 hub which is currently spread across Jabodetabek, FMH will be built in densely populated areas and equipped with special storage devices for fresh and frozen foodstuffs.

Startup investment online groceries keep flowing

On the same day (07/9), startup online groceries another is Segari also announced funding in a series A round. led proprietary venture arm Gojek. This adds to the long list of startups in related fields that have received funding since the pandemic. off the record DailySocial.id, since Q2 2020 [the early period of the pandemic] until now, there have been 10 investments recorded, including:

"Changes in consumer shopping behavior due to the pandemic pose new challenges in the grocery industry. Customers demand fresh and high-quality products every day amid complex grocery supply chains. Pasarnow is here to address these challenges by eliminating inefficiencies through a data-driven business model. With growth strong since last year, we believe that the Pasarnow team can accelerate their operational capacity building and business development," said East Ventures Managing Partner. Willson Cuaca.

It was also stated that the retail market value of foodstuffs in Indonesia is estimated to have reached $108 billion in 2019, however online groceries only contributed less than 1%. With current conditions, market size online groceries is expected to increase by about $13 billion by 2025.