Beleaf Secures IDR 103 Billion Series A Funding Led by Alpha JWC Ventures

Startups agritech Beleaf today (01/8) announced a series A funding of $6,85 million or more than IDR 103 billion led by Alpha JWC Ventures. This round continues early stage funding which was achieved at the end of 2022. Participated in this round of Openspace new investors and some angel investors.

JWC Ventures Alpha Partner Eko Kurniadi revealed that Beleaf has consistently shown remarkable progress. Offer end-to-end they empower farmers to achieve higher productivity and quality, as well as a better economy and farming experience.

"As Beleaf continues to exceed their growth and profitability milestones, we are very confident in their potential to revolutionize the agricultural sector in the long term," he said in an official statement.

beleaf position themselves as a business agritech comprehensive services with a focus on Farming as a Service (FaaS). The company's mission is to increase the yield and productivity of local farmers across Indonesia, and ultimately improve their livelihoods.

It is planned that the fresh funds received will be used to expand the farmer network, which currently numbers 145, so that it can reach at least 2.000 farmers by the end of 2024. This FaaS program is said to have increased the yield and income of many farmers, as evidenced by the successful distribution of 700 tons of production in May 2023.

The company will also establish its presence in the main agricultural markets of Indonesia and neighboring countries. Beleaf targets to immediately expand its agricultural network to several new areas including Bali, Medan and Lembang. It will set up an R&D farm at the site as a base to roll out a FaaS network across the country.

In addition, the funding will be used to double its supply chain and commercial division to improve operating efficiency, and expand its sales footprint to new countries. Beleaf will also continue to drive the development of IoT devices and Beleaf OS to further enable FaaS services and increase farmers' crop yields.

Openspace Executive Director Ian Sikora says he has assessed a large number of agribusiness startups, and has seen Beleaf's early progress stand out. "Approach full stack in selected crops allows them to achieve rapid growth, especially seeing them achieve the best margins in their category," he said.

Farming as a Service

Founded in 2019 by Amrit Lakhiani, Beleaf started business as a premium hydroponic brand offering a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. As the business grew and experienced managing their own farms, companies began to expand their product to technology-enabled farm management.

Beleaf launched the program Farming as a Service in 2022, engage farmers in Puncak and Bandung with technology-enabled farm management. FaaS is already quickly solving some of the pressing challenges in this sector. Even though it is an agricultural country, Indonesia's potential is still not optimal and its dependence on imported agricultural products is still high.

Based on the ResearchandMarkets report, the market agritech Indonesia is growing at a CAGR of ~39,7% based on revenue generated during the 2016-2021 fiscal year. Vertical sub Farming as a Service (FaaS) dominate the Agritech Market in Indonesia based on revenue generated in fiscal year 2021 followed by the sub verticals AgriTech, Agri Fintech, Market Access, and Agri Biotech.

Beleaf Founder and CEO Amrit Lakhiani said they realized that instead of building more farms themselves, they had something that could be applied more broadly and more robustly.

"We can use our expertise and the technology we have created to provide equal benefits to existing farmers, and improve the quality and collective productivity of the Indonesian agricultural industry which is facing several development hurdles, while bringing the best local products to overseas markets through exports," he said.

The islands have fertile land, abundant water, and an environment suitable for growing a wide variety of fruit and vegetables effectively, but are limited by highly fragmented farming communities. The potential includes the 70% of smallholders who do not have access to finance, insurance, technology, efficient logistics and direct access to markets.

Powered by big data and IoT, Beleaf solutions offering services end-to-end  starting from operations, distribution, and offtaking – connecting farms, distributors and retailers in one integrated ecosystem. This allows farmers to increase their productivity, quality and profitability.

The current focus of the business is to control and increase partner farm yields by up to 15%. Their platform monitors weather, seeding, planting activity, nutrient dosing, farm planning and harvesting. All data collected from this process will then power its machine learning for the continuous improvement of agriculture, as well as research and development of future agribusiness solutions.

Beleaf uses its post-harvest facilities to consolidate volumes and create a consistent, high-quality product that can be exported to its network of international clients. With this foundation, Beleaf is on track to become a market leader in exporting green vegetables and root vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, ginger and carrots.

Agricultural products from Beleaf are now sold domestically and also for export. These products are available in 4 countries including Singapore. Going forward, the company plans to enter another 6 countries soon by the end of 2024. Beleaf is also available in more than 180 retail outlets in Jabodetabek, 8 online channels and various restaurants.