Warung Pintar acquired Bizzy Digital to strengthen its end-to-end offerings
24 February, 2021
Warung Pintar, a micro retail technology startup company, today announced the acquisition of Bizzy Digital, an integrated logistics and distribution supply chain B2B platform. The deal combined two companies that work with 600 brands and serve 230,000 retailers in 65 cities across Indonesia and support nationwide networks of distributors.
After the acquisition, Warung Pintar solidified its leading position in Indonesia’s nascent B2B e-commerce market. Indonesia’s B2B e-commerce market has immense room for growth – it is expected to grow to become at least thrice the size of its B2C cousin. In 2020, Indonesia’s B2B ecommerce revenue contributed less than a half of the total e-commerce revenue. By comparison, B2B ecommerce revenue contributed to 93% of the total e-commerce market in India and 72% in China.[1]
The combined companies also boast a larger shareholder foundation to support growth going forward.
Warung Pintar and Bizzy Digital share a synonymous mission in transforming traditional retailers and improving efficiencies along the fragmented supply-chain in Indonesia, but approach the problem from two distinctive angles.
Founded in 2017, Warung Pintar solves the day-to-day problems faced by micro-merchants around Indonesia by leveraging technology. Micro-merchants, known as “warungs” are a big part of Indonesia’s economy, contributing to 70% of the total retail transactions in the country.
Its remarkable growth in the middle of pandemic is the result of its prudent approach in avoiding excessive cost and its laser focus in creating better products for its users.
“Through this acquisition we are hoping to change the digital distribution approach on the ground, which is historically heavily driven by promotions and discounts as a customer acquisition strategy, which is deeply opposed by many of our FMCG partners. Having Bizzy Digital as part of the bigger Warung Pintar ecosystem will enable us to guarantee product reliability, availability and fair pricing by working hand-in-hand with the brands’ distributors,” said Agung Bezharie, Cofounder & CEO of Warung Pintar.
Read also: Warung Pintar CEO: How My Grandmother Inspired Our Vision for Indonesian Mom-and-pop Shops
On the other hand, Bizzy Digital’s approach begins with the supply-side, working with brands and onboarding distributors to the platform. This allows for brands to attain clear visibility of their awareness, products/distribution efficiency and performance, and consumer demand.
Post transaction, as a brand and organization, Bizzy Digital will still maintain its entity and act as a bridge that focuses on bringing deeper collaboration with brands and distributors, enabling them into a massively growing digital ecosystem of retailers. This is an approach that answers many frictions that are present between eB2B startups and FMCG companies and their distributors.
“As Bizzy Digital becomes part of Warung Pintar, there will be no other player as integrated up and down the supply chain. This combination will enable us to serve brands and distributors with unprecedented value-added, data-driven strategy at scale,” said Andrew Mawikere, CEO of Bizzy Digital.
By teaming up, this partnership allows each company to focus on its own strength; Warung Pintar in its retailers’ digitalization and Bizzy Digital in its brand- and distributor-centric approach in forging collaboration partnerships. The two-pronged approach allows Warung Pintar and Bizzy Digital to create synergies through the platform from opposite ends of the supply chain, which is the much-needed foundation in order to digitize the gigantic yet fragmented Indonesian FMCG market.
“As a common shareholder in both companies, we find strong synergy and efficiency by combining the two companies. Warung Pintar comes from a demand-side platform and Bizzy Digital comes from a supply-side platform. Combined they will be able to serve both consumers, retailers and brands in the most effective way, it is really 1+1=3,” said Co-founder of East Ventures, Willson Cuaca.
[1] UNCTAD, Frost & Sullivan, Thai Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA), Statista, Department of Statistics Malaysia, Macquarie ECS, February