Founders of Mangkokku
Mangkokku, a culinary startup based in Indonesia, has received US$2 million in seed funding from local VC firm Alpha JWC Ventures.
With the fresh investment, Mangkokku is aiming to open 30 branches by the end of 2020 and more than 75 by 2021.
Mangkokku was founded in 2019 by Indonesian Masterchef judge Arnold Poernomo and businessman Randy Kartadinata. The duo also partnered with two F&B serial entrepreneurs Gibran Rakabuming and Kaesang Pangarep, who are also sons of Indonesia’s President Jokowi.
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The startup offers professional chef-level dishes in the form of rice bowls at affordable prices. Spinning a local twist on conventional Japanese rice bowls, it uses local ingredients to suit their rice bowls to local tastebuds.
Mangkokku currently operates 22 branches in the Greater Jakarta area and plans to expand into Surabaya soon.
The startup is now looking to expand its offerings beyond rice bowls in 2021.
Starting with beverages, dessert and packaged sambal chilli sauce, it plans to eventually roll out other dishes to become an end-to-end culinary solution for its customers.
“We see that F&B continues to be an attractive sector that could benefit from technology enablement and venture capital investments. Mangkokku clearly has shown strong traction even during the pandemic, which proves its product-market fit. Our support on capital, know-how, and resources is to help the company scale faster and evolve from what’s already good to a great, lasting business,” said Eko Kurniadi, Partner at Alpha JWC.
Kartadinata claims Mangkokku serves 400 to 600 bowls per branch on a daily basis. However, he is not satisfied.
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“The dream is to become Indonesia’s largest F&B group targeted to the mass market and build our own ecosystem of multiple brands and culinary institutions. Not only that, but we also want to be the best culinary company in terms of local and regional scalability, as well as operations excellence. That’s why we took this startup route and partnered with Alpha JWC Ventures,” he added.
“Our passion for local food is what started the company, and we believe that the core of Mangkokku lies in the superiority of our dishes and continuous innovation,” Poernomo said.
“We are also building a company with a global mindset: that the only way we can grow fast, right, sustainably, is by providing the best options at affordable prices and maintain a standardized process in every single dish we serve. That’s why we operate all of our branches and apply technology-enhanced cooking processes to maintain product quality and consistency,” Poernomo concluded.
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Image Credit: Mangkokku
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