Pasarnow, multi-channel e-groceries platform, raised USD 3.3 million seed funding led by East Ventures

Pasarnow, Indonesia-based multi-channel e-groceries platform, announced that it has secured a USD 3.3 million seed funding. The investment round is led by East Ventures with participation from SMDV, Skystar Capital, Amand Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and other angel investors.

Founded in 2019 by James Rijanto, Donald Wono, and Cindy Ozzie, Pasarnow is focusing on streamlining Indonesia’s complicated and layered fresh products supply chain as well as delivering the best 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 highly sensitive and perishable, so it requires fast and temperature-controlled delivery, which causes expensive logistics costs. That is why Pasarnow has been investing heavily on 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 a greater efficiency in our operations,” explained James Rijanto, CEO and Co-founder of Pasarnow.

Pasarnow applies a multi-channel ordering system in a single mobile application which provides 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 the specific needs of customers. The operational back-end aggregates all the orders and develops a demand forecasting system that helps its 1,000+ farmers and suppliers to better plan and optimize their harvesting and delivery schedules, and in turn enables Pasarnow to offer fresh and great quality products at fair-trade pricing to customers and minimize its wastages.

The value of Indonesia’s grocery retail is estimated at USD 108 billion in 2019 with online grocery accounting for only less than 1% of the total. However, online grocery retail is projected to increase at around USD 13 billion by 2025. With the huge opportunity driven by a shift in customer behaviour towards shopping groceries online due to COVID-19 pandemic, Pasarnow has been able to expand its operations to other cities, yield 400% increase of B2C orders, and double its revenue monthly.

This funding will be used to expand Pasarnow’s regional coverage and strengthen its capability in the groceries supply chain and final-mile solutions, achieving the company’s vision to be the first multi-channel e-groceries platform in Indonesia. Pasarnow seeks to operate in more new cities, hire key talents, enhance its data and technological infrastructures as well as develop micro warehouses, called Frontline Mini Hubs (FMH). As a complement to the current 10 hubs across Greater Jakarta, the FMH which are located in densely populated areas and equipped with proper fresh and frozen products infrastructure, are designed to enable instant delivery and provide best final mile fresh produce solutions to customers.

“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 more customers and further increase our tech capability,” said James.

Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Cuaca said, “The changing shopping behavior of consumers due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about another challenge in the grocery industry. Customers demand fresh and high-quality produce on a daily basis amidst the complex grocery supply chain. Pasarnow comes to tackle the challenge, eliminating inefficiencies in the process through its data-driven business model. With its robust growth in the past year, we believe that the Pasarnow team can accelerate its capacity building and scale up their business.”

Managing Partner of Skystar Capital Abraham Hidayat said, “We have been supporting the Pasarnow team since their beginning and we have seen how they are able to use their team work, resilience and ingenuity to create solutions to tackle different problems along the way. Given our experiences working with them, we are confident that James, Donald and Cindy will be able to realize their vision to streamline the multilayered supply chain of the industry and be able to deliver fresh food products at an affordable price for the Indonesian consumers.”