Wifkain Gets Initial Funding Led by Insignia Ventures [UPDATED]

Platform supply chain leaders Wifkain textiles announces initial funding round (seed) led by Insignia Ventures Partners with an undisclosed amount. Amount angel investors prominent members participated in this round, including the CEO Atome Financial Indonesia Wawan Salum.

Positioning itself as a pioneer, Wifkain aspires to be the first technology-based platform to meet supply chain needs (supply chain leaders) textiles for fashion brands in Indonesia. Through this funding, Wifkain wants to expand its business reach to SMEs and owners fashion brands, increase the number of merchants, and build teams.

For your information, Wifkain was founded by former banker and fashion entrepreneur Sara Sofyan (CEO), entrepreneur D2C brand Chindera Soewandy, and former Bukalapak Rudy Setyo Hartono (CTO) in 2020.

Co-founder & CEO Sara Sofyan says a lot brand difficulty finding manufacturing partners due to a number of factors. To that end, Wifkain provides Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) services by cooperating with various manufacturers in various specialties, capacities, and locations in Indonesia.

"The platform we built connects sellers and buyers directly, cutting through supply chain leaders by cutting out intermediaries, the transaction process is cheaper, faster, and low risk," Sara said in her official statement.

Meanwhile, Founding Managing Partner Insignia Ventures Partners Yinglan Tan says E-commerce and social media make fashion available quickly and easily accessible online. However, supply chain leaders upstream in Indonesia will remain disconnected and fragmented.

"Thus, Sara and the team at Wifkain are well positioned to digitize the entire supply chain in the textile industry. They have made significant early-stage progress since launching their platform. We are delighted to be their partner on this journey," he said.

Challenges and targets

Sara sees that the ecosystem of the Indonesian textile industry from upstream to downstream has not been fully digitized. The process chain is very long, complex, and not transparent because it involves many intermediaries.

Manufacturing companies also do not have an integrated system for buyers, limiting their opportunities to increase sales. The ordering process can take up to several days. The level of non-compliance was recorded (unfulfillment rate) sales can reach 30-50 percent. This situation forces fashion business people and brand owners through a multi-layered chain of processes.

In addition, traditional textile traders who sell offline have limitations in the choice of products which are relatively expensive, the ordering system is not integrated, and there is no product guarantee.

In fact, Indonesia is one of the largest textile markets and manufacturing centers in the world. Its market value is around 40% of the total $55 billion global fashion industry market according to the Euromonitor report in 2018. The value is projected to grow at 5% CAGR in 2022.

Wifkain is trying digitizing the supply chain, especially for long tail merchant in the SME segment aka merchant with a relatively low search volume and level of competition. Through the solutions built, Wifkain wants to increase connectivity, transparency and efficiency for the textile industry supply chain

To meet supply chain needs in Indonesia, Wifkain will develop order management and inventory management which enables order confirmation within hours, reduces order non-fulfillment rates to less than 5%, increases production process transparency, and provides analytical data such as demand predictions to suppliers.

Since its services were commercialized in 2020, Wifkain recorded 11 times GMV growth (YoY) and pocketed 150 merchants (textile and factory traders) on the island of Java. Wifkain claims to be able to complete processing sourcing in one day, faster than the standard which generally takes up to three weeks. It guarantees there is an efficiency of purchasing costs up to 50%.

Contacted DailySocial separately, Sara reveals it is not easy to digitize merchant or beg textiles that have been operating conventionally. One of the obstacles can be seen from the development of technology on the platform to accommodate the needs merchant.

"[Development of] technology [for the textile market] is not much benchmarkingon the market so we have to [do] testing properly according to need merchant, said Sarah.

Even though marketplace While textiles are relatively new to the Indonesian market, Sara admits that Wifkain's business measurement metrics remain the same as other e-commerce models, such as Monthly Active User (MAU), Lifetime Value (LTV), and retention rate.

Meanwhile, currently Wifkain merchants are only in the Java and Bali areas, but the scope of buyers has reached various locations throughout Indonesia.

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