Stoqo e-Commerce is Forced to Close affected by the Pandemic

In the middle of the corona pandemic, not a few e-commerce profits because of customer orders so many times. Supported products related to basic daily needs to support health. But apparently, this does not apply to e-commerce Stoqo. This online shop that sells supplies ranging from detergent to garlic and ginger has to go out of business.

Founded in 2017, Stoqo is more focused on business to business or B2B services (company to company) such as offices or business ventures. This startup operates in the food or grocery sector.

This startup supplies fresh food ingredients such as chili, eggs to coffee grounds to food outlets, or restaurants. Inevitably, when the corona pandemic limited business space, it also weakened Stoqo’s business.

A coil source revealed, Stoqo last served customers on April 22, 2020. A day earlier, he said, management had gathered employees who were notifying Stoqo’s operational cessation.

“On April 21 (2020) employees were gathered per division led by the manager that Stoqo stopped operating. All work was asked to be stopped,” he told the coil, Friday (8/5).

He added, the employees were then given the choice to resign with severance pay or survive but without clarity. “Stoqo stops operating. Employees are asked to resign with severance pay or stay without clarity,” he said.

Stoqo Has Made Official Notification Closed on Its Official Page

On Stoqo’s official website, Kump (8/5) also found a notice about stopping the operation of online shops claiming to have served and empowered SMEs in the culinary field in Indonesia.

Aswin Andrison and Angky William from McKinsey & Co, former software developers at Amazon.com Inc., founded Stoqo in 2017 to find and send ingredients to small restaurants in order to streamline the food supply chain.

The company claimed their business grew seven times in 2019. In Greater Jakarta, the company had served tens of thousands food outlets. But he was reluctant to comment about the closure of Stoqo.

250 people had been employed in Stoqo since it was first founded. Several investors also funded the company including Alpha JWC Ventures, Mitra Accel, Insignia Ventures Partners and Monk’s Hill Ventures.

“With great reluctance, we announce that Stoqo has stopped operating,” a statement was posted on its official website.

The company also said that they were already become a partner of SME to empower them especially in the culinary sector in this digital economy era. However, the pandemic caused a drastic decline in their revenue that caused them to be unable to continue their business.  

Stoqo founder and CEO Aswin Andrison, through Tech in Asia, previously explained that operational closure is indeed not easy. But alas, this corona pandemic has made the company’s cash flow increasingly eroded and eventually forced to close down.

“A significant decrease in revenue has resulted in cash flow challenges. We have tried every possible option, but when (days) pass, our situation is getting worse, not better,” as reported by Tech in Asia.

Until this news aired, Aswin Andrison could not be contacted by the coil, both from Indonesia and Singapore.

Stoqo is not the Only Startup that Closed in the Middle of the Pandemic

Several other startups in Indonesia besides Stoqo are reportedly out of business in the middle of a pandemic. Not only layoffs of employees, but some of them were also forced to stop the company’s operations due to a hard coronavirus blow.

Especially companies engaged in tourism and hospitality. For example, the hospitality startup Airy has announced the termination of cooperation with its partners as of May 31 this year.

This pandemic is a hard hit even for world-class startups. Quoting from CNBC International, various startups or startups in the United States cut thousands of workers as a corona effect.

The wave of layoffs (layoffs) includes more than 3,800 workers in 40 companies ranging from hospitality, transportation, food delivery, to artificial intelligence (artificial intelligence).