This article is published as a part of a partnership with Future Food Asia. Crowde is one of the 11 finalists of the US$ 100,000 Future Food Asia (FFA) 2020 Award to be hosted from September 21-25.

In Indonesia, roughly a third of the land is used for agricultural purposes and the sector contributes significantly to the country’s economy. Independent smallholders dominate Indonesia’s agricultural commodities production, managing 85 per cent of Indonesia’s rubber plantations, 90 per cent of its coffee plantations, and 95 per cent of its cocoa plantations.

For oil palm, Indonesia’s most valuable agricultural export, the proportion of plantations managed by independent smallholders is smaller – about 30 per cent – but still significant. Hence, the vast majority of companies operating in Indonesia’s agricultural supply chains are either directly or indirectly impacted by the activities of independent smallholders.

Approximately 40 per cent of Indonesia’s population is dependent on the agriculture sector, though it contributes only around 13 per cent to the GDP.

Agriculture, like any other business, requires financing to grow. Accessing finance for these farmers is a major hurdle, only two out of 10 smallholder farmers are eligible for bank loans. While the vast majority remain unbaked lacking credit profiles, they tend to fall prey to loan sharks charging prohibitive interest rates.

This is where Crowde steps in. An agri-focused fintech company, Crowde dreams to revolutionise the agriculture industry by giving access to capital and technology innovation; making it possible for micro and small agripreneurs to grow businesses on their own feet.

Farmers for Farmers

Co-founder Yohanes had his first tryst with the painful realities of the Indonesian agriculture sector while carrying out a community development project during his time at university. He realised there was an opportunity to conduct business differently in the sector and began a farm himself.

Mingling with other farmers he learned that a critical issue that plagued the sector’s productivity stemmed from the access to financing as well as the lack of price transparency due to lack of access to a market. He, along with Co-founder Risyad, started Crowde with a mission to leverage technology to solve these issues of access.

They started their journey with high ambition – trying to target farmers across the island nation of Indonesia. The founders were quick to fall and even faster to get up. They adjusted their strategy to be more focused on two regions, go through multiple crop cycles, and showcase how their platform is adding value.

Also Read: Top-funded agritech startups in Indonesia

Today Crowde is ready to grow beyond Java and Sumatra and as a Future Food Asia 2020 finalist they will benefit from the launchpad it offers to startups.

Solving the problem of access

When a smallholder farmer needs to grow their business, most of them are aware that financing hinders their growth. But after years of working with farmers and helping them scale, Crowde realised that farmers need a lot more. Access to (new) markets, agronomic information about past plantations, projecting and planning for risks, and understanding the supply and demand data.  Their platform offers a full suite of assistance services to increase the odds of success of the farmers on its platform.

After understanding the value of the platform farmers are onboarded to Crowde, where they learn how to budget their farming activities and plan their growing cycle with lower project risk. The platform then helps farmers get a loan from lending companies and to avoid any potential misuse of the funds, rather than giving the money directly to the farmer, he is provided with inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides of the same value based on the growth plan that was decided.

Throughout the growing cycle, farmers can leverage the Crowde platform for information and advice. At the time of harvest, Crowde helps the farmer find a buyer for its products at the right price.

This supply and demand information becomes critical in improving growing decisions for the subsequent growing cycle. This is how Crowde creates a closed-loop platform that is helping Indonesian farmers access a brighter future.

Input, output, and everything in the middle

Lower productivity and dropping quality have been characteristics of Indonesian farm output. Using better quality inputs which are more expensive and hence deem the need for financing can have a direct impact on the final produce farmers take to the market.

In addition to that, providing farmers with well-timed agronomy advice during growing cycles and a more robust supply chain can help improve the chances of these farmers to succeed.

Also Read: These are the 5 game-changers in Indonesia’s agritech sector

Today 61 per cent of Indonesian farmers are above the age of 45 and by 2050 with the expected boom in population Indonesia, the country may lack a young enough talent pool to feed this growth. Moreover, the Agri supply chain, technology, and farmer education also need to rapidly change.

While Crowde has been on this mission for three years now and manages to increase a farmer’s income from 15 to 50 per cent in each growing cycle. But it is not enough. The Jakarta-based startup calls to the agri ecosystem as a whole to continuously assist in this revamp of the country’s most important sector.

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Image credit: Future Food Asia

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Generally, decent entrepreneurs can succinctly explain what their product does. In fact, good entrepreneurs can describe their market and their customer. For the most part, funded entrepreneurs can pitch their company in terms that an investor can relate to. Hence getting your story straight with a pitch deck flow.

For most entrepreneurs, it’s neither easy nor intuitive to put the investor version of the story together. Thus it is easy to talk product, customer, and maybe market. But when you are talking to investors, your company is your product, and you need to pitch in a way the investor can grab onto.

As can be seen, fortunately, there is an easy formula that works nearly universally. The key to this formula is that it covers all the required subjects, but strings them together into a coherent and engaging narrative flow. (See also why you should sweat your executive summary.)

You need to cover all the building blocks, but the key is in the arrangement of those blocks. Thus here is a picture of the framework, followed by a walkthrough of the pieces:

The astute may have noticed team is not first. Many investors say the team is the most important thing, and I agree, so some people recommend that you start with the team. They are wrong! Hence we are trying to craft a narrative here–hook them with the story of the customer and the problem. Team is important, but as you can see from above it just comes later in the flow.

Also Read: Pitch deck fundamentals: What you need to include to build an effective one

Problem and customer

Every time I sit down with an entrepreneur for the first time, I always start the conversation the exact same way. Before we’ve even settled in, I’m already asking “Who’s the customer and what’s their problem?”. If you are telling a story, this is the logical place to begin. As an entrepreneur, if you cannot describe who your customer is and what problem you are solving for them, you’ve got work to do.

Market

The next thing to do is to talk about how these customers make a market. What its size is, whether it is growing, if it is fragmented, is it ripe for disruption, who the other players are, etc. In short, what makes it interesting.

Solution

Here you want to talk about the solution. Focus on the pain relief, rather than the product. These are the attributes of the product that solve the problem. Highlight benefits, not features. Explain what the perfect solution looks like, not all the details about what you have built.

Product

Here is where you say, “Yeah, I’ve built a solution with those required attributes, and I’ve solved it in a cost-effective way.” Given enough resources, anyone could solve virtually any problem. Emphasise how your solution is both practical and economically viable.

Plan

This is the story of how you are going to get your solution to the customer. Your business model, your go-to-market strategy. What are you actually going to be doing and selling, and what the key challenges are going to be along the way.

Go-to-market

Here is where you get more specific about your actual sales strategy. Are you selling with a direct sales force, over the web, through partners, through distributors? Where are these customers and how can you locate them, talk to them, and bring them on board cost-effectively? What is the customer acquisition cost going to be relative to the lifetime value? (Hint: LTV better be higher than CAC, or you’re in trouble.)

Also Read: How to create a great investor pitch deck

Your awesomeness

Now that your listener has a handle on what you are doing, it’s time to tell them why you have the stuff to pull it off. Yeah, you are super-smart and have the right education, skills and experience, but you also gel as a team. Keep in mind that a high-functioning team is very different from a group of high-functioning individuals. Investors are looking for 1+1=3.

Company development

Here is where you talk about where you are, where you have been, what you need to do next, what resources it is going to take, and how long it’s going to take. You are going to talk about a plan that makes sense, is realistic in terms of both time and resources and is sequenced logically.

Financial model

Now that your potential investors understand what you are going to do, let’s talk about the resulting financials. What is the revenue model? What kinds of gross and net margins will this company generate? How fast can it grow? How much capital will be needed down the road?

Exit options

Looking forward, let’s assume your business starts to grow. Take time to consider who the potential buyers might be. Who cares about what you have built? Are there different kinds of potential buyers? What will they value the company for? What kinds of prices are they likely to pay? How much traction/revenue/growth is required before the company will be of interest to them?

Call to Action

A great call to action needs to express that you know you need help and your desire to get them involved. Start the dialogue by providing the details of your current fund-raising.

This formula allows you to take an enormous amount of detail and weave it into a narrative that hooks the listener immediately with a human interest story about a customer and their problem and starts an interesting discussion about solving it. The result has flow. Flow is key to telling a good story and is key to organising your company’s information into a cohesive investment hypothesis. Of course, this is not the only way to do it, but it’s a tried and true template that works well and has had proven success.

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The article was first published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Marcos Luiz Photograph on Unsplash

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Singapore-based SME digital financing platform Funding Societies (known as ‘Modalku’ in Indonesia) has announced the appointments of Frank Stevenaar as its first Chief Financial Officer and Nihit Nirmal as the new Chief Product Officer.

Along with this, the fintech firm has promoted Ishan Agrawal, Vice President (Engineering), as Chief Technology Officer.

Also Read: Funding Societies raises US$40M

These appointment come at a juncture where the startup gears up for larger funding rounds and a sustained growth trajectory.

These key changes will help the fintech firm lay the foundation for outsized recovery once the macroeconomic situation improves post-COVID-19, it said in a press statement.

“As we steer through COVID-19 with good relative success and are recovering to near pre-COVID results, we are cautiously optimistic about 2020, excited for 2021, and planning ahead with concerted leadership from Frank, Ishan, and Nihit,” Kelvin Teo, Co-founder and Group CEO, said.

Stevenaar has 20 years of experience in financial services. He is responsible for overlooking the firm’s finance operations, accelerating its fundraising efforts, and strengthening its shareholder engagement.

Also Read: GoBear grabs US$17M in funding to accelerate its financial services across Asia

Prior to this, Stevenaar co-founded financial services company GoBear in 2015 in Singapore and Thailand, where he developed its finance team and expanded the company across Southeast Asia.

Nirmal is responsible for product management, product design, and driving the company’s digital growth. He comes with 15 years of experience in technology with his last assignment at LendingKart, a digital lending platform in India, where he was Senior VP and Head of Product Management and Growth.

Agrawal oversees Engineering, QA, DevOps, information security and the firm’s IT teams, driving the business through building secure and scalable technology.

Funding Societies provides business financing to SMEs in Southeast Asia, which is crowdfunded by individual and institutional investors.

After five years of lending across Southeast Asia, Funding Societies has disbursed over S$1.6 billion (US$1.2 billion) in financing across more than 2.8 million loans across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

In April, Funding Societies raised US$40 million in Series C funding round from existing and new investors. Its investors include Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia.

Also Read: What are Digital Full Bank and Digital Wholesale Bank licences?

Funding Societies was recently shortlisted for the MAS digital wholesale banking license under a consortium with AMTD, SP Group, and Xiaomi.

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Image Credit: Funding Societies

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(An earlier version of this article — written based on the details taken from an official press release — mentioned the funding amount as US$69M. After publishing, Waresix contacted e27 to update the piece to reflect the actual amount.)

Indonesian logistics-tech startup Waresix said today it has concluded its US$100 million Series B fundraise from existing investors EV Growth and Jungle Ventures, and new investors, including SoftBank Ventures Asia, EMTEK Group, Pavilion Capital and Redbadge Pacific.

This round comes just six months after the startup secured US$25.5 million in Series A round.

Also Read: Indonesian logistics tech startup Waresix seals US$14.5M Series A led by EV Growth

“The capital will be invested in developing the most robust logistics technology infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and further building out our world-class team which will help us in transforming a US$40-billion industry,” said CEO Andree Susanto said.

Founded by Susanto and Wibowo, both alumni of the University of California Berkeley, Waresix connects shippers and business with available warehouses and trucks across Indonesia. The firm aims to improve supply chain efficiency by improving utilisation and removing intermediaries.

It provides multi-modal services including land and marine transportation, general cargo handling, and cold storage to cater inter-island freight movement across Indonesia.

Waresix claims it serves more than 250 marquee corporate clients, such as Unilever, Indofood, Siam Cement Group, Wings, and JD.ID. Its logistics ecosystem spans over 40,000 trucks and 375 warehouses in more than 100 cities and towns across the archipelago.

Also Read: 5 reasons to be bullish on logistics tech in Asia

The company has also integrated its services with key logistics facilities such as the Indonesia National Port, which has allowed Waresix to expand its reach beyond Java and Sumatra which is now across all of the nation’s main islands.

As per an SCMP report, Southeast Asia’s third-party logistics market accounted for US$36.4 billion in 2017 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent through 2025. This makes it a soon-to-be US$55.7 billion industry, according to Research and Markets.

The archipelagic makeup of Indonesia has resulted in one of the highest logistics costs in Asia, accounting for nearly a quarter of the country’s US$1 trillion gross domestic product (GDP).

Also Read: Logistics startup Moovaz raises US$7M Series A funding round led by Quest Ventures

In its 2018 Logistics Performance Index, the World Bank found that while Indonesia’s logistics sector has improved in recent years, the country’s logistics cost-to-GDP ratio of 24 per cent still lags behind that of regional peers Thailand and Malaysia. This makes logistics in Indonesia a US$240 billion opportunity.

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Image Credit: Waresix

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Malaysia’s Carsome appoints Benjamin Koellmann as COO

His role: Koellmann will be responsible for driving operational efficiency of the car-trading platform across all the markets, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Before this, Koellmann was part of the early team in Lazada Indonesia and has also been involved in setting up Indonesian grocery delivery platform, HappyFresh.

Most recently he was the Director of E-commerce (Food) at Dairy Farm International in Singapore.

Also Read: Used-car trading startup Carsome appoints new CFO Juliet Zhu, looking to strengthen market position

“With his extensive management experience on e-commerce platforms and being a startup founder himself, we are confident that he will be a strong contributor as Carsome strives towards building trust and assurance throughout the entire supply chain of the used car industry,” Co-founder Eric Cheng said.

F10 Singapore expands into Spain

The story: The expansion will connect the Singapore accelerator programme and its partners — such as Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX), Bank Julius Baer and R3 — with fresh ways to collaborate with innovators across Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, and Valencia.

What is F10 Singapore?: F10 Singapore is the Asia launchpad for F10 Global, Europe’s leading accelerator for fintech, regtech, insurtech and deeptech. The F10 network gives entrepreneurs and startups strategic opportunities to connect with corporate partners which include SIX and the Spanish Stock Exchange (BME).

F10 Singapore first launched in January 2020 to create new opportunities for its Asia-based partners to collaborate with European banks, insurers, and tech experts. The first round of F10 Singapore’s incubation programme received more than 200 applications and strong interest from startups with a focus on solutions for digital assets, enterprise data management, payments and more.

F10 Singapore helps to solve the top problem fintech entrepreneurs face: selling their solution to established banks and insurance companies. F10’s programme goes beyond corporate exposure and facilitates targeted collaboration platforms for its startups and corporate partners.

Each startup benefits from a dedicated F10 Coach to support them in their effort to build successful partnerships with incumbents.

Hasura raises US$25M to help developers build app easily

Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners (lead), Vertex Ventures US, Nexus Venture Partners, Strive VC, SAP.iO Fund

What the funds will be used for: Hiring and commercial product development.

About the company: Hasura is helping to build the modern world of globally relevant, data-driven applications and APIs. Its range of data access solutions helps organisations accelerate product delivery by instantly connecting data and services to applications with GraphQL APIs.

Inflexor Ventures hits first close of its US$230M fund

Plans with the money: To back early-stage startups in the pre-Series A to Series A stage.

Details: The fund which will be capped at US$500 million is also said to be India’s largest domestic, technology-focused investor for 2020, according to The Economic Times.

Focus sectors: B2B/enterprise, AR/VR, Big Data, robotics, cybersecurity, blockchain, IoT, deep-tech, intellectual property and tech innovation.

“We are seeing an increased focus on digitisation and technology innovation globally and it’s going to accelerate further, particularly in India in the current environment,” said Jatin Desai, Managing Partner of Inflexor.

Also Read:  Indian Angel Network launches US$55M VC fund; makes first close at US$27M

“We want to identify the right technology startups at an early stage and help them scale up in India and sell to global markets and in the process hopefully make some decent returns for our investors,” he added.

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Image Credit: Carsome

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