Asia Partners, Falcon Edge back Indonesia's GudangAda

Sequoia Capital India and Alpha JWC Ventures, which led a $25.4 million Series A in May 2020, both re-upped. An additional contribution came from Wavemaker Partners. It took part in a $10.5 million seed round earlier in 2020 alongside Alpha JWC and Pavilion Capital.

GuangAda was founded in 2019 by Stevensang, formerly head of sales and distribution at Orang Tua Group, a local fast-moving consumer goods (FCMG) player. The company was initially a website through which the top dozen wholesalers could transact with smaller peers.

Previous attempts by manufacturers to build offline networks that reached into the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment – all the way down to the "warungs" or roadside kiosks – failed to scale. GuangAda took the ecosystem online.

The goal is to bridge the technology gap, enabling every trader to conduct multiple transactions, as seller and buyer. This boosts turnover, brings down prices, improves inventory management, and widens customer reach. GudangAda takes a fee from the seller in each deal.

“FMCG is a tough industry to disrupt and still mainly conducted in traditional ways. It’s not easy to change behaviors, especially one that has stayed for decades, but GudangAda proved that it can be done if you know the right gateways, the pain points to address, and how to execute efficiently,” Chandra Tjan, a managing partner at Alpha JWC, told AVCJ after the Series A.

GudangAda now works with around 500,000 SMEs across 500 cities in Indonesia. The new funding will support geographical expansion and the further broadening of a portfolio that already encompasses pharmaceuticals and homeware as well as FMCG. There will also be upgrades to the company’s technology capabilities.

Asia Partners, which focuses on growth-stage funding for technology companies in Southeast Asia, closed its debut fund earlier this year with $384 million in commitments. E-commerce enablement is a major theme. Other portfolio companies include SCI Ecommerce, which helps brands use data analytics to optimize online traffic, improve customer experience, and build consumer loyalty.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Support services
• Early-stage
• Indonesia
• Asia Partners
• Falcon Edge Capital
• TMT
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