Pocketing Initial Funding from Salt Ventures, SYCA Official Is Steadily Deepening Its "Direct-to-Consumer" Strategy

Utilizing social media and beauty products that are currently increasingly popular among young women in Indonesia, SYCA Official present to offer beauty products, namely lip held. To DailySocial SYCA Official Co-founder Pamela Wirjadinata said, judging from the current trends and developments in the antique industry, it was the right time for her together with co-founder another, namely Monica Tan to present a special platform for beauty products online online.

"Starting from inspiration to Japan in 2019, I saw there a lot local brands Who has independent shop alone, especially in beauty section. Furthermore, Monica and I saw many opportunities that could be taken to develop the business in Indonesia. We feel everyone starting to gain trust to beauty brands in Indonesia," said Pamela.

Utilize social media accounts and services marketplace, SYCA Official wants to give more choices to its target users to enjoy local beauty products with quality and affordable prices. SYCA also tries to present natural products referring to beauty trends from South Korea.

business model direct-to-consumer

Carrying draft direct-to-consumer (DTC) currently SYCA Official claims to have around 10 thousand customers who make transactions using the service marketplace such as Shopee, Tokopedia, Sociolla, Female Daily, and Love and Flair.

For now, the company is preparing website which can be accessed by the customer. Asked why they took this approach, according to Pamela, this strategic step became more ideal and in accordance with their concept of selling directly to the target market (DTC). The company is also trying to focus on retail and how to get profit margin the best at the same time get brand awareness which is even wider.

"This year we have a target to be able to launch website. If it goes according to plan within the next 1-2 months we will release it. For applications, we are still looking at future conditions," said Pamela.

Although they did not experience significant changes or impacts during the spread of Covid-19, because what they did from the start was online; However, in terms of production of goods, Pamela said that she had experienced problems in terms of production because the factory could not operate normally. Delivery of goods was also interrupted.

"So far, we have sold around 17 thousand products with an average of 2000 units per month since the launch of SYCA Official. For our partners, we have worked with two partners whose all of the products we bought were broken from them," said Pamela.

Powered by Salt Ventures

As a startup that offers approach "new economy", SYCA Official is a portfolio owned by Salt Ventures, which has invested quite a lot in new startups offering a similar business model. After pocketing an undisclosed nominal initial funding, SYCA Official has several business plans.

"We raised our pre-seed funding last February 2020. Next, we want to expand our product line, which of course in line with marketing and brand awareness strategy with this first funding. We really hope it will help us to grow bigger and better with Salt Ventures as our partner, said Pamela.

There are several reasons why Salt Ventures is interested in investing in a startup that is targeting beauty products and taking full advantage of it online channel. According to Salt Ventures Indonesia Managing Partner Danny Sutradewa, there are 3 basic things that are the focus of their investment.

"Among these are the founder's character and ability to turn ideas into reality and to navigate the business in a variety of circumstances. We also looked at SYCA's business model that uses infrastructure online to make his business scalable and focus on the right target market. SYCA currently has a presence online the strong one. In addition, the cosmetic industry is a rapidly growing industry in Indonesia," Danny said.

Apart from SYCA Official, other Salt Ventures portfolios that have run businesses with a similar concept but with different products are Sneakersshoot.