East Ventures Leads Investment in a Healthy Culinary Startup in Surabaya

East Ventures, a venture capital company, is leading investment in the startup of a healthy culinary retail network based in Surabaya, called Greenly. The initial seed funding was followed by several angel investors.

The company plans to use the fresh funds for product innovation, technology development, and expanding its network in Surabaya. Greenly will also expand to other cities.

Willson Cuaca as Managing Partner of East Ventures claimed to be optimistic that Greenly’s business could develop more rapidly. “Our trust in founders outside Jakarta has been proven beforehand by the success of IDN Media, which has expanded from Surabaya to all of Indonesia,” he said.

Edrick Joe Soetanto and Liana Gonta Widjaja founded Greenly because of the difficulty in living a healthy diet in Surabaya. The reason, fast food, and healthy drinks are hard to come by. Even if there are, the variants are few.

The price is also not necessarily affordable. “We want to fill the gap between healthy but expensive food offered by players today, and affordable fast food,” Liana was quoted as saying in a press release on Wednesday (12/2).

Therefore, they built Greenly as fast-casual retail that provides a variety of salads, grain bowls, cold-pressed juices, smoothies, nut milk, and other healthy products. They also see growth in the middle-class population as an opportunity.

The First Greenly Outlet Opened in Surabaya

Based on FAO data, the average Indonesian population consumes 122 grams of vegetables and 92 grams of fruit every day. This consumption is lower than the recommended daily intake level of 300-400 grams of vegetables and 100-150 grams of fruit.

Referring to the data and their own experience, Edrick and Liana built Greenly last year. The first outlet was established in Surabaya. Liana is a nutritionist from UC Berkeley and has produced hundreds of Greenly recipes. While Edrick, a serial entrepreneur and former consultant at PwC. He focuses on developing and executing Greenly’s business strategies.

“We want to bring healthy eating patterns at affordable prices, convenient, and easy to obtain,” said Edrick. “We believe that the support of East Ventures and all partners, this mission will be realized.”

One of the main components of Greenly’s strategy is to integrate new retail concepts with the Online to Offline (O2O) approach. With this concept, Greenly adopted a multichannel sales pattern through physical outlets and food delivery.

Greenly Already Has Five Outlets in Surabaya

At present, Greenly operates five outlets in Surabaya. One outlet is in a mall with a cafe concept and the other four serve cloud kitchen concept delivery messages so consumers cannot eat on the spot.

That strategy makes Greenly’s operations more efficient, so the product prices are affordable. Greenly’s business will grow five times during 2019. It is based on the East Ventures-Digital Competitiveness Index or EV-DCI 2020 report which Surabaya ranks third out of 24 cities with the biggest competitiveness in Indonesia.

Specifically, Surabaya was ranked high in the category of electronic money transactions and the GDP of the logistics sub-sector. These two categories form the foundation of Greenly’s business where more than 50% of sales are via digital-based delivery such as Gojek and Grab.

Based on EV-DCI, Jakarta is the best city to support the development of digital business businesses. So startup founders outside Jakarta must be able to adapt quickly and expand to the capital.

“Our trust in founders outside Jakarta has been proven beforehand by the success of IDN Media, which has expanded from Surabaya to all of Indonesia. Than we are sure they can develop Greenly from Surabaya to Jakarta and other cities, “said Managing Partner of East Ventures Willson Weather.