Bioma, a Product-as-a-Service startup, raised pre-seed funding co-led by East Ventures and Init-6

Bioma, a Product-as-a-Service startup that enables consumers to rent various types of physical assets, announced the completion of an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding round co-led by East Ventures and Init-6. Bioma will allocate the fund to further expand its services, especially in catering to different use cases of the customers. Bioma will also utilize the fund to invest in more resources, mainly to add operations, products, and tech talents, ensuring a seamless user experience. 

Bioma is the platform that provides customers access to higher quality goods, including a large assortment of products in the electronics, furniture, kitchen appliances, and mother & baby categories, with significant cost savings by offering a pay-per-use system. Under the pay-per-use system, the customers will pay the fee based on the usage of the on-demand product, and the responsibility of the products is managed by Bioma. This serves as a solution that solves customer pain points related to limited capital, limited usage, limited storage, and limited resources in managing the maintenance of the assets. It is very common for customers to constantly purchase costly items to be used for only a short time. Once the item is purchased, many customers also get tangled with the operation hassle, such as the maintenance or reparation of broken items, which in a lot of cases, leads to productivity loss.  

With a combined experience in the leading technology companies and investment industry, and a proven track record as seasoned founders in experiencing an exit of the startup;  Arlo Erdaka (Chief Executive Officer), Melvin Juwono (Chief Operating Officer), Gideon Yuwono (Chief Product Officer), Obed Tandadjaja (Chief Technology Officer), and Marcel Christianis (Chief Growth Officer), realized that there is an ongoing demand of an alternative way to consume physical assets and established Bioma in early 2022.

Bioma’s solution provides flexibility, optionality, and convenience for businesses to rent the items instead of purchasing them. This model also solves businesses’ operational hassle of fulfilling and maintaining purchased items. Moreover, this asset-light solution also solves customer pain points that lead to positive environmental outcomes. Bioma offers a circular approach as an environmentally friendly alternative to the current unsustainable consumption pattern and allows one product to be reused by multiple customers. Bioma will also manage the refurbishment of each item to extend its life cycle and close the loop by recycling, upcycling, or repurposing the item to minimize the amount of waste produced. 

In the operational aspect, Bioma enables brands to become circular. Applying the same vision in enabling asset-light businesses, more than 90% of the inventory offered by Bioma is owned by third parties such as brands and individuals through a revenue-sharing model, with Bioma managing the operations end-to-end. Brands can thus expand into the rental market without building their rental supply chain.

Bioma is used by an array of businesses in various sectors, from property to agriculture, and various sizes, from startups to large corporations. Bioma offers a rental marketplace of a broad range of physical assets that can be accessed through its website. Bioma continuously discovers more use-cases for the service, showing its wide-ranging possibilities and growth potential.

“We are glad to receive the trust and support from East Ventures & Init-6. We believe in the mission of enabling and transforming businesses in Indonesia into asset-light businesses, which can save up countless time, energy, and money for the business in managing these physical items. Our solution allows the business to focus on the important aspects in allocating the resources, providing convenience and affordability that were not available previously,” said Arlo Erdaka, Chief Executive Officer of Bioma.

“We are excited to back Bioma to provide a technology-driven solution to offer a seamless rental experience for businesses and consumers. There is a shifting purchasing behavior, where access triumphs ownership and Bioma serves as the solution to bridge the gap between asset owners and users, hence opening up a way for better utilization of products. We believe in the enormous opportunities in this industry.  With the strong will and experience of the Bioma team across tech, product, and operations, we look forward to growing with Bioma and accelerating the move to a more circular world,” said Avina Sugiarto, Partner at East Ventures.

“We believe that Bioma is in a perfect time to provide services and rental solutions not only to retail customers but also to businesses. The global trend is gradually moving from the mainstream, buy-and-dispose, linear economy to the sharing economy, and the market opportunities in this sharing economy are sizable and still growing. Not to mention big potentials coming from businesses which are currently focused on transforming their model into light-asset businesses. Supported by a strong founding team with long experience in this industry, we are confident to see the positive development of Bioma going forward,” said Rexi Christopher, Venture Partner at Init-6.