Pasarnow founders
Pasarnow, an Indonesia-based multi-channel e-groceries platform, has secured a US$3.3 million seed funding, led by East Ventures.
SMDV, Skystar Capital, Amand Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and other angel investors also participated.
This funding will be used to expand Pasarnow’s regional coverage and strengthen its capability in the groceries supply chain and last-mile solutions.
Pasarnow seeks to expand into new cities, hire key talents, enhance its data and technological infrastructures, and develop micro warehouses called frontline mini hubs. As a complement to the current ten hubs across Greater Jakarta, the hubs are designed to enable instant delivery and provide the best last-mile fresh produce solutions to customers. They are located in densely populated areas and equipped with proper fresh and frozen products infrastructure.
“Currently, Pasarnow operates in Greater Jakarta and Bandung, with over 100 full-time employees and 200 daily workers and driver-partners,” said Donald Wono, CTO and co-founder of Pasarnow. “This funding round enables us to cater to more customers and further increase our tech capability.”
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Founded in 2019 by Wono, James Rijanto, and Cindy Ozzie, Pasarnow aims to streamline Indonesia’s complicated and layered fresh products supply chain and deliver quality food products to its customers through its multi-channel platform.
“Ensuring product freshness when it reaches the customers is supremely challenging. Food products like fruits, vegetables, and frozen meat are susceptible and perishable, requiring fast and temperature-controlled delivery, which causes expensive logistics costs,” said CEO Rijanto.
“That is why Pasarnow has been investing heavily in our technology and operational infrastructures to solve these issues. Furthermore, having a multi-channel platform helps us in achieving faster economies of scale and in creating greater efficiency in our operations,” he added.
Pasarnow applies a multi-channel ordering system in a single mobile application to provide a unique customer experience based on the channel segmentation: B2B and B2C.
Each channel has a different set of prices, promotions, and key features to meet customers’ specific needs. The operational back-end aggregates all the orders and develops a demand forecasting system that helps its 1,000-plus farmers and suppliers better plan and optimize their harvesting and delivery schedules. It enables Pasarnow to offer fresh and great quality products at fair-trade pricing to customers and minimize its wastages.
Indonesia’s grocery retail value is estimated at US$108 billion in 2019 with online grocery accounting for only less than one per cent of the total. Online grocery retail is projected to increase at around US$13 billion by 2025.
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With the vast opportunity driven by a shift in customer behaviour towards shopping groceries online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pasarnow has expanded its operations to other cities, claims to have yielded a 400 per cent increase of B2C orders and doubled its monthly revenue.
East Ventures, co-founder and Managing Partner of Willson Cuaca, said, “The changing shopping behaviour of consumers due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about another challenge in the grocery industry. Customers demand fresh and high-quality produce daily amidst the complex grocery supply chain. Pasarnow comes to tackle the challenge, eliminating inefficiencies in the process through its data-driven business model.”
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Image credit: Pasarnow
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