Thai food supply chain player secures $23.5m Series B

The round was led by PTT Oil & Retail Business (OR), a listed affiliate of state-owned oil and gas giant PTT that has interests spanning retail oil, commercial fuel, consumer brands, and financial services. Additional contributions came from agro-industrial conglomerate Betagro Holding, 500 Global’s Orzon Ventures, and Volta Circle, a sustainability-focused family office, as well as Openspace.

Founded in 2017, Freshket supplies premium quality raw ingredients, dry goods, and food products – all sourced locally, mostly from farmers – directly to restaurants and hotels, offering a degree of supply chain transparency. Household customers account for a smaller portion of overall demand. It is estimated that restaurants and hotels in Thailand spend USD 5.9bn per year on fresh produce.

The company receives orders totalling approximately THB 100m (USD 2.9m) per month, up 3x from when the USD 3m Series A closed in September 2020. That round was led by Openspace and featured Thai GP ECG-Research, Innospace, the founders of Indonesian agriculture technology start-up TaniHub, European-Singaporean food player Denis Group, and Thai family office Seedersclub.

The new funding will go towards strengthening Freshket’s operating system, improving service efficiency, entering new product categories, and geographic expansion within Thailand. There are also plans to develop forecasting technology to drive transparency and reduce food waste.

Ponglada Paniangwet, co-founder and CEO of Freshket (pictured, centre, with Komjak Rattakham, chief of staff, left, and Saran Chiwtanasuntorn, vice president of engineering, right) said she is “grateful for the support and trust received from OR, the local and regional leader in the retail and commercial market.”

OR decided to invest directly, having previously backed the company through Orzon, a growth-stage investor in Southeast Asia that operates as a joint venture with 500 Global. Rajsuda Rungsiyakull, a senior executive vice president at OR and a director of its captive VC unit Modulus Venture, added that Freshket represents another supply channel for the company’s restaurant brands.

Nichapact Ark, a Thailand-based director at Openspace said: "We are very proud of the development and growth of Freshket, especially in how they weathered the turbulent time amidst COVID, actively doing all they could to support their customers when many other suppliers did not.

In addition, the Thai food-supply industry is a very large market, and we believe Freshket is best placed to capture its huge potential as it grows and expands.”

Openspace is also an investor in TaniHub, which has a similar business model. It combines a sourcing network, demand aggregation platform, and embedded finance functions so that farmers can sell directly to restaurants and households. The company closed a USD 65.5m Series B last September.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Consumer
• Thailand
• Openspace Ventures
• 500 Startups
• Agritech
• Logistics
• TMT