HappyFresh bags US$65m in fresh funds, doubles down on hyperlocal strategy

Indonesian-headquartered online grocery platform HappyFresh has received US$65 million in series D funding. CEO Guillem Segarra (pictured) said it has been extremely busy scaling up its operations across the various markets while maintaining its quality and safety standards. While the brand was unable to reveal exactly how much of the funds would be allocated to marketing, David Lim, VP, marketing and MD of Thailand said it will be focusing a lot more on driving brand awareness in all countries using a hyperlocal strategy that speaks to the local target audience.

"The personal shopper is a symbol of our high-quality service of freshly handpicked groceries and will continue to take centre stage since we understand that groceries can be very personal to our customers," Lim said.

He added that in the coming months, the marketing teams will be producing more video content and interesting campaigns that are going to capture the attention of its audience that are staying and working from home across the countries. "From our data and research, we can see that more and more families are seeking new recipes to cook at home, as well as consuming more and more videos during their free time. This is seen as an opportunity for us to engage with them on a one-to-many and one-to-a few levels," he explained.

The team has also implemented plans to improve service offerings such as more payment methods, better user experience and assortment, bringing HappyFresh's service to more families in each country across the region. According to HappyFresh, this round exceeded initial targets due to significant demand from new and existing investors. It was led by Naver Financial Corporation and Gafina B.V., followed by STIC, LB, and Mirae Asset Indonesia and Singapore. Existing investors such as Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund and Z Venture Capital have also participated.

HappyFresh has been experiencing growth over the past 18 months. Last year, its traffic grew by 10 to 20 times across Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. According to the company, this has translated into growth in top-line as well as both new and repeat customers and improved economics.

"We see a big shift in customers’ behaviour; retention and frequency rates have significantly increased while the overall basket size has been consistently growing. We attribute this to a major shift in the share of wallet from offline to online, which is here to stay," Segarra added.

In January this year, HappyFresh partnered Ben's Independent Grocer (B.I.G), a premium supermarket chain in Malaysia, to offer the latter's groceries on its online platform. B.I.G. currently operates in selected areas within Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru.

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