Pasarnow E-Groceries Platform Ready for Expansion with Investment

Indonesia-based multichannel e-Groceries platform, Pasarnow, announced that it has received seed funding of USD 3.3 million or around IDR 47 billion. 

This funding round was led by East Ventures with participation from SMDV, Skystar Capital, Amand Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and a number of angel investors. 

Founded in 2019 by James Rijanto, Donald Wono, and Cindy Ozzie, Pasarnow focuses on simplifying the supply chain in Indonesia’s complex fresh ingredients sector as well as offering customers high quality and fresh food products through a multi-channel platform. 

Ensuring the freshness of products when they arrive at the customer is a big challenge for businesses in the fresh food sector. 

“Food products such as frozen fruits, vegetables, and meat are perishable, requiring fast delivery with controlled temperature, and ultimately leading to high logistics costs,” said James Rijanto, CEO and Co-founder of Pasarnow. 

That’s why, said James, Pasarnow invested heavily in technology and operational infrastructure to solve this problem. In addition, James said the multi-channel platform helps companies achieve economies of scale faster and create better operational efficiencies. 

Using B2B and B2C Systems 

Pasarnow uses a multi-channel ordering system in one application where there are two categories of customer segments, namely B2B and B2C. Each channel offers different prices, promotions, and key features to meet specific customer needs. 

The Pasarnow system collects all order history to generate market demand predictions, so that more than 1,000 of Pasarnow’s partner farmers and suppliers can better plan and optimize their harvest schedules. 

That way, Pasarnow can offer customers high-quality and fresh ingredients at the best prices and minimize the amount of wasted fresh ingredients. 

The retail market value of groceries in Indonesia is estimated to reach USD 108 billion in 2019, but online grocery only contributes less than 1 percent. However, online grocery is expected to increase by around USD 13 billion by 2025. 

With this great opportunity, and driven by changes in customer behavior to online grocery shopping due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pasarnow has expanded its operations to other cities and claims to have increased orders from the B2C segment by up to 400 percent. 

“Currently, Pasarnow operates in Greater Jakarta and Bandung with more than 100 employees and 200 day laborers and driver-partners,” said Donald Wono, CTO and Co-founder of Pasarnow. 

Operational Expansion 

This funding will be used by Pasarnow to continue to increase operational expansion and strengthen end-to-end solutions for the grocery supply chain in order to achieve the company’s vision to become the first multi-channel e-groceries platform in Indonesia. 

Pasarnow will expand its operational areas in new cities, recruit talent, upgrade its data and technology infrastructure and build micro-warehouses, Frontline Mini Hubs (FMH). 

To complement the 10 hubs that are currently spread across Jabodetabek, FMH will be built in densely populated areas and equipped with special storage devices for fresh and frozen foodstuffs, enabling Pasarnow to provide instant delivery services to customers. 

Willson Weather, Managing Partner of East Ventures, said that changes in consumer spending behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic pose new challenges in the grocery industry. 

“Customers demand fresh, high-quality products every day amid complex food supply chains. Pasarnow is here to address these challenges by eliminating inefficiencies through a data-driven business model,” said Willson. 

Meanwhile Abraham Hidayat, Managing Partner of Skystar Capital, expressed his support for the Pasarnow team from the start and has seen how “they can use their teamwork, resilience and intelligence to create solutions to problems”. 

Pasarnow, is an application-based online shopping platform for fruit, vegetable, protein, and basic food products. Pasarnow Chief Marketing Officer, Cindy Ozzie said, Pasarnow provides the highest quality food ingredients. 

“With Pasarnow’s quality control system, the quality of groceries is guaranteed to arrive at the door and received fresh,” he said, quoted on Sunday (15/8/2021).