Indonesian B2B marketplace GudangAda bags US$100m in funding for team expansion

B2B eCommerce marketplace GudangAda has raised more than US$100 million in a Series B funding round led by Asia Partners and Falcon Edge. The company said that the funding will be used for team expansion across key divisions and executional capabilities, as well as building and strengthening GudangAda’s ecosystem of service offerings. These include logistics, POS SaaS, marketing services, data services, and financial services. GudangAda also plans to further deepen its competitive moat through a strong focus on artificial intelligence to provide best-in-class and personalised products and services to merchant customers.

According to the company, existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC, and Wavemaker also contributed to the oversubscribed funding round, which exceeded the initial round target of US$75 million. The latest funding round brings GudangAda’s total cumulative funding to approximately US$135 million. 

Stevensang (pictured), CEO of GudangAda, said that the company is now well-positioned to empower the supply chain from producers, distributors, wholesalers to retailers throughout Indonesia, with almost half a million users from over 500 tier-one to tier-three cities and develop a comprehensive monetisation model with a complete ecosystem. He added that both Asia Partners and Falcon Edge enjoy a stellar track record of portfolio company support, especially in areas where we need to accelerate growth, and added that it is also grateful for the continued support and commitment from existing investors.

According to the company, the strong interest from investors is primarily driven by its "unprecedented scale". GudangAda said it grew to US$6 billion of net merchandise value in less than three years and with less than US$35 million of cumulative historical investment. According to the company, the GudangAda mobile app is used by over half a million businesses in Indonesia, generating employment for an estimated three million individuals.

As part of GudangAda’s unique asset-light and capital efficient model, the company said that it has started to collaborate with local vehicle and warehouse providers, including those owned by its partner SMEs. In addition to the partnership model, it also provides a dynamic transport and warehouse management system to assist partners in their digitalisation journey. Since its launch in mid-2020, the company said that its logistics service has doubled in size every two months.

GudangAda has also recently started to expand its product categories into pharmaceuticals, packaging, homeware, and stationery, with the goal of providing a one-stop solution for Indonesian SMEs. This expansion is driven through end-to-end partnerships with principals, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers within the value chain. Since its expansion in early 2021, tens of thousands of SMEs have transacted in the platform across the three new categories, added GudangAda.

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