KitaBeli Received Seed Funding from East Ventures

People started shopping online during the corona pandemic, thus encouraging transactions on e-commerce platforms. Hence, East Ventures led an investment in KitaBeli platform with undisclosed value of seed funding. This funding round also involved AC Ventures and several other angel investors.

Based on a McKinsey & Company report, social commerce is a platform that facilitates the buying and selling of products through social media. Meanwhile, e-commerce facilitates transactions, including payment and delivery.

As a social commerce platform, KitaBeli facilitates the purchase of staple goods, FMCG, and other household products in groups (team-buying). KitaBeli application users can invite their acquaintances, friends, or family to form groups, then together buy products at discounted prices.

“Indonesian consumers are very social, like to share information with friends and family about the goods they buy and the various discounts they get,” said Prateek Chaturvedi, Co-founder of KitaBeli. in a written statement.

Therefore, according to Prateek, KitaBeli designed a feature that allows users to easily share information and invite friends and family to buy goods in groups to get cheaper prices.

“In our opinion, this is something that is not yet available on other platforms. Now, everyone can shop for daily necessities at a lower price,” said Prateek.

Currently, KitaBeli operates in the Jabodetabek area. The group-buying model is believed to be able to encourage users to invite their acquaintances to join and download the KitaBeli application.

Service Expansion to Increase Sales

KitaBeli designed features that allow users to share information and invite friends and family to buy goods in groups to make it more economical. He considered the concept of shopping as that is not widely available in the country.

By carrying out this method, the transaction value per user in the KitaBeli application continues to grow every month. “Users are satisfied with the speed of delivery of goods,” said Ivana. As many as 95% of orders were delivered within two days. Along with the increase in transactions, KitaBeli plans to expand the market to other cities.

“KitaBeli users like KitaBeli’s social features. They are also satisfied with the speed of delivery. 95 percent of orders are delivered within two days. From Jakarta, we plan to immediately expand services to other cities, including tier 2 to tier 4 cities,” he said. Ivana Tjandra, Co-founder of KitaBeli.

This approach makes KitaBeli different from other social commerce players in Indonesia. The users order goods directly in the application, not through agents or resellers. This allows KitaBeli to build customer loyalty and a more profitable business model.

“KitaBeli is introducing team-buying to one of the fastest-growing eCommerce markets. We are excited to partner with Prateek and Ivana to bring this new way of shopping to Indonesian consumers,” said Willson Cuaca, Co-founder and Managing Partner at East Ventures.

Established in March 2020

KitaBeli was founded in March 2020 by Prateek Chaturvedi, Ivana Tjandra, Subhash Bishnoi, and Gopal Singh Rathore. Prateek is the founder of Getfocus.in, a SaaS company that provides B2B marketing solutions from India which Moka acquired in 2018.

Meanwhile, Ivana has experience in developing new businesses and verticals for Bridestory and Handy. Then, Subhash and Gopal worked with Prateek at a previous startup. They then worked together to establish KitaBeli based in India and Indonesia. Technology team in Bengaluru, while operations and marketing in Jakarta.

“E-commerce [in the FMCG sector] is a giant industry with huge growth room, especially in tier 2 and 3 cities,” said Adrian Li, Managing Partner at AC Ventures. He also added that KitaBeli’s team-buying model utilizes social media to create a pleasant user experience. This experience encourages the purchase of daily staple goods with high frequency.