MDI leads Series A for Indonesia cloud kitchen
MDI Ventures, the corporate VC arm of state-controlled Telkom Indonesia, has led a USD 13.7m Series A round for local cloud kitchen start-up Legit Group.
Sinar Mas Digital Ventures, East Ventures, and Winter Capital also participated. It follows a USD 3m seed round led by East in 2021 with support from AC Ventures.
Legit operates about 30 cloud kitchens mostly in the Jakarta metro area, filling orders for in-house food service brands that offer paper-boxed meals exclusively on an online basis. The brands include Pastaria (spaghetti), Sei’Tan (smoked meat), Sek Fan (stir-fry), and Ryujin (rice bowls).
Donald Wihardja, CEO of MDI, described the company’s founder, Bram Hendrata, as having a “successful and profitable” 15-year track record in the food and beverage (F&B) industry in terms of product and marketing strategies. Technology is also said to be an important part of the offering.
“[W]hile most regular cloud kitchen business owners focus on improving their abilities to serve more customers in new areas, Legit Group has seen the potential of new generation F&B technology that focuses more on developing F&B brands by applying technology to maximise profits,” Legit said in a statement.
Nevertheless, Legit has identified geographic expansion as a priority in its Series A phase and has tied the idea to maintaining profitable unit economics.
The plan is to grow significantly outside of the Jakarta area – currently home to 95% of locations – by the end of the year. There will also be investments in technology and operating systems improvements to increase efficiency and capacity.
At the time of the seed round, the pandemic was fueling greater ambitions. Legit had about 45 distribution points and had made plans to grow to 135 by the end of 2021. That year, it recorded a 61% increase in revenue from June to July.
The company said it has grown 3x since the seed round. During this period, it dropped one of its menus, a Korean fried chicken brand called Juju Chikin, and added Sek Fan and Ryujin.
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