Indonesian FMCG B2B platform GudangAda has secured $25.4 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia India and Alpha JWC.
Also joining the round is existing backer Wavemaker Partners, according to an official statement.
The fresh funding comes less than three months after the announcement of GudangAda’s seed round where it raised $10.5 million, which according to Alpha JWC represents the “largest seed round in Indonesia”.
GudangAda will use the funding to continue investing in its technology platform, launch new business initiatives, and strengthen the team.
Founded in 2019, GudangAda operates as a B2B marketplace for all traders in the FMCG supply chain to meet and transact online as it looks to capitalize on the opportunity in the local FMCG market said to be worth over $50 billion.
The company helps merchant members on its platform grow their traditional business by optimizing their inventory turns, pricing, product selection, buyer-seller discovery, as well as order management and analytics.
After reaching nearly full market coverage of FMCG wholesalers in Indonesia, the company says it is now targeting 7-10% of the nation’s large retailer base for their next phase of growth.
“B2B supply chains in many emerging markets face challenges around working capital limitations, inefficient inventory management, and manual operational processes. GudangAda is building a digital ecosystem to transform the massive and highly fragmented FMCG market in Indonesia,” said Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore managing director Abheek Anand.
The new funding round also serves as a timely injection of capital at a time when the FMCG market in Indonesia is facing a number of challenges due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and limited physical interactions are pushing wholesalers and retailers to adopt digital solutions.
The funds, GudangAda says, will enable it to extend critical support to the supply chain and ensure availability of daily essential consumer goods, such as staples, cooking ingredients, health and sanitary products, to meet growing consumer demand; while also helping the industry function smoothly in this time of large-scale social restrictions (locally known as PSBB).
“These are challenging times. But GudangAda is excited and fully prepared to launch a new chapter of growth in our journey, together with our investors, in fulfilling our mission – which is to empower all players in Indonesia’s FMCG value chain with one-stop solutions through the use of technology”, said GudangAda founder and CEO Stevensang.
With the rising awareness around the importance of social distancing, GudangAda has launched a number of initiatives, including a pilot logistics service to help their merchant network maintain essential products’ availability in the local supply chain. This service is currently available in Greater Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Medan and Lampung, while the company has expansion plans to cover major cities nationwide within the next few months.
Additionally, the company claims to have also dedicated its own resources to launch food donation programs across the country for underprivileged local citizens. Since the Covid-19 outbreak in Indonesia, the team has maintained a ‘no lay-off’ policy and instead continued to recruit quality talent from within Indonesia’s start-up ecosystem.
Apart from Sequoia India, Alpha JWC and Wavemaker, GudangAda also has Pavilion Capital on its cap table after the private equity fund participated in its seed funding round. With this Series A funding, GudangAda has raised US$36 Mn in total, in only 15 months since its inception.
