UENA raised new funding co-led by East Ventures and Trihill Capital, aiming to expand the hyperlocal F&B for daily food

UENA, a hyperlocal online F&B startup based in Indonesia, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding co-led by the existing investor, East Ventures, and the new investor from Trihill Capital. This new round, that was closed in Q1 2023, strengthens UENA’s balance sheet following the seed funding raised in September 2022. The fund will be used to continue expanding the locations and services to reach more users and customers.

“After implementation and execution of our idea, we feel fortunate to see the validation we receive from the market. Majority of our orders come from repeat customers and their orders continue to increase from month to month. Even though we have only been operating in less than one year, the mature stores are already break-even and getting a healthy payback period. The new fund adds our confidence to continue capturing the great opportunity ahead,” said Alvin Arief, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of UENA.

Since launched in August 2022 by Alvin Arief (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer) and Roy Yohanes (Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer), UENA has opened 7 kitchen locations in Jakarta and has served more than 300.000 portions. Customers can order UENA directly through UENA App or by contacting UENA WhatsApp number. It does not rely on food delivery aggregators too much since more than 80% of their orders come through direct channels. Each of the kitchens only serve a hyperlocal radius of 1 – 1.5 km radius and handles delivery internally to minimize delivery cost and delivery time. A typical order will arrive in 15 minutes after a customer order.

“We are glad to double down our investment in UENA. We believe in the problem and solution that was presented by Alvin and Roy when we first invested. A couple months in, the idea turned into a real conviction with the real feedback received from the market. We are excited to continue our support to UENA and partake in the disruption of the daily food industry in Indonesia,” said Jordy Tenka, Investment Professional at East Ventures.

UENA sees the problem where daily food segment in Indonesia is a US$90 billion market annually but almost entirely served by unorganized street-side vendors. This causes customer pain related to high fragmentation, especially in quality, reliability, and price. UENA aims to solve this problem by serving quality food at affordable prices through online delivery. It uses a very light cloud kitchen format and leverages the power of technology and economy of scale to increase quality while decreasing the price at the same time.

“Daily food segment is very interesting with few menu selections because people keep coming back to the same basic staple menus. This can lead to very high volume on each of the items where we can maximize on the operation streamline and procurement in bulk,” said Roy Yohanes, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of UENA.

UENA App

“Indonesia predominantly consists of the middle class group. A growing sub-segment of this group is aspiring middle class who is estimated to represent 45% of population only has a monthly spending of US$36-80. More often than not, they have difficulties in accessing affordable and nutritious food, especially when available options tend to compromise food safety and hygiene. We support UENA’s efforts in improving the affordability, availability, and accessibility to daily good food options for the many middle-class Indonesians,” said V. Ian Sulaiman, VP at Investments at Trihill Capital.

UENA is now gearing up for expansion and duplication in Jakarta. Each kitchen requires low capital, fast set-up, and flexibility to use a wide range of available spaces. UENA will also continue to add more menus to increase customer repeat orders at multiple meal times each day and multiple days throughout the week.