KitaBeli is bringing e-commerce to Indonesia’s small cities – TechCrunch

Difficult provide chains imply that customers in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indonesian cities usually find yourself paying extra for items than their friends in massive cities, like Jakarta. KitaBeli is on a mission to vary that, with its personal distribution community and a direct-to-consumer social commerce app. At this time the startup introduced that it has raised $20 million in recent funding led by Glade Brook Capital Companions, together with participation from returning buyers AC Ventures and GoVentures, and new backer InnoVen Capital.

TechCrunch coated KitaBeli’s final elevate, a $10 million Collection A, in March 2021.

The funding might be used to increase into extra small cities in Indonesia, and add new product classes like magnificence, private care and mom and child merchandise.

The startup says it has grown greater than 10x in six months and claims to be the most important direct-to-consumer social commerce platform in Indonesia. It now has greater than 400 staff.

KitaBeli says Indonesia’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities make up a $100 billion market, with 200 million shoppers that contribute greater than 50% of Indonesia’s gross home product. However they face extra challenges ordering on-line in comparison with their friends in Tier 1 cities like Jakarta. For instance, lengthy supply instances, increased costs due to difficult provide chains and belief points as a result of clients don’t know who’s promoting a product.

To handle these, KitaBeli has opened a warehouse in each metropolis it operates in, enabling same-day and next-day deliveries. It procures merchandise immediately from manufacturers and principals, leading to financial savings that may then be handed on to their clients. Lastly, it addresses the belief subject via the social commerce mannequin, by which customers collect folks from their social networks for group buys.

Co-founder and CEO Prateek Chaturvedi tells TechCrunch that when he moved from India (the place his earlier startup GetFocus was acquired by Mokapos), he was struck by the variations and similarities between the Indian and Indonesian e-commerce markets. For instance, e-commerce in Tier 2 cities was underdeveloped in comparison with Tier 1 cities.

“On digging deeper, we discovered that customers in these smaller cities are shopping for on-line for the primary time, and so they face belief points with these faceless companies and need assistance and steering on utilizing the app,” he mentioned. Because of this, KitaBeli experimented with social options in its app, like having brokers, known as Mitras, in every neighborhood, referrals and group shopping for.


Quick-moving client items have been picked as KitaBeli’s first class as a result of they’re steadily bought. “Since we’re direct to shoppers, we wish customers to construct a behavior of shopping for with us,” Chaturvedi mentioned.

To purchase on KitaBeli, customers open the app, place an order, then obtain incentives for sharing these purchases with their buddies. KitaBeli’s consumers use it to buy staples like rice, oil, sugar, milk and private care objects. Chaturvedi mentioned every consumer usually spends $5 to $10 in each order, and every group often consists of 5 to 25 folks.

KitaBeli is ready to scale up its distribution community by opening small warehouses in every metropolis as a substitute of getting massive distribution facilities. “Since we focus totally on FMCG, we’re in a position to churn our stock very quick,” mentioned Chaturvedi. “Our system works to reduce the times of stock for every merchandise. By lowering the quantity of inventory within the warehouse, we in a position to cut back the house required as properly, which reduces the fee.”