GudangAda’s Ambition in the FMCG Market after Receiving Funding

The marketplace for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), GudangAda announced that it has pocketed seed funding at an unspecified value.

The funding was led by Alpha JWC Ventures with Wavemaker Partners, with participation from Pavilion Capital. This new capital will be utilized by GudangAda for expansion, starting from encouraging business partnership efforts, expanding service coverage, and recruiting new talents.

GudangAda was founded in late 2018 by Stevensang who is also the managing director of a local distribution company. He also heads the sales and distribution department in one of Indonesia’s largest FMCG companies.

Stevensang explained, that FMCG is an industry that is difficult to break down innovation. Many similar startups have tried this but there are various problems. One of them is the importance of relationships and trust in doing business.

With this funding received, GudangAda hopes to meet its growth target in 2020. Especially able to strengthen the supply chain of the FMCG industry.

Stevensang stressed, building this business was based on the experience and lessons he had received for decades. “So we can depart from what is truly important for traders, issues that require solutions, and from where the adoption of this innovation can begin,” Stevensang said.

Paul Santos, Managing Partner of Wavemaker Partners said, from outside FMCG it might look like a conventional industry that could be easily disrupted by technology startups. In fact, most of these industries still run offline and are driven by habits that are not easily changed.

“Therefore, we are pleased to be able to support GudangAda, which is guided by Stevensang’s broad approach and experience,” Paul said.

The First Investment that GudangAda Has Received Since it was First Established

This investment is the first institutional capital undertaken by GudangAda since it was first established. The presence of this Jakarta-based startup has received positive responses from several large, medium and small traders in the FMCG sector.

GudangAda claims its platform has thousands of members consisting of distributors, wholesalers, and retailers with tens of thousands of SKU (stock-keeping units) items stored in their warehouses.

GudangAda is aiming for FMCG opportunities in the business-to-business (B2B) sector, especially in serving a large number of transactions between FMCG traders online. Ralali and MBiz were also working on business opportunities in the same sector before, which helped to expand the procurement sector to other goods categories.

GudangAda’s Business Growth is up to 8% per Year

One of the things that make JW Ventures smitten with the startup is because since it started operating on October 19, 2018, it can achieve business growth of 8% per year.

This result was achieved thanks to the services offered at GudangAda which allow suppliers, distributors, and retailers to be interconnected. Besides this application also provides a third-party account (escrow account) to provide convenience in transactions.

When joining GudangAda, sellers and buyers can trade at the same time that the results of transactions and sales can be seen as transparently. At the same time, traders can also access a network of customers, business people, and can choose a wider and more diverse product.

“Over the past year, we have successfully introduced GudangAda products and services and received positive responses from large, medium and small traders,” explained Stevensang, founder of GudangAda in an official statement on Monday (10/2).

In just one year since it was founded, GudangAda already has thousands of members (consisting of distributors, wholesalers, and retailers) on its platform, covering more than 500 cities on all of Indonesia’s major islands from Sumatra to Papua.

The GudangAda platform currently offers tens of thousands of SKUs (stock-keeping units) ranging from food, cosmetics, to cigarettes and strive to continue to add a variety of products and additional partners per day.