Indonesia’s agricultural industry contributes significantly to the economy and has 13.5% of GDP. However, the upstream agricultural market is highly fragmented with a disorganised value chain for agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and agrochemicals.
AgriAku is an Indonesian agritech startup that aims to democratise Indonesia’s agricultural industry. It is building a B2B marketplace to digitise Indonesia’s agricultural inputs market and improve farmer productivity. Now, the company has announced that it has nabbed $6 million in a pre-Series A funding round.
Utilisation of funds
The financing round was led by Go-Ventures alongside participation from MDI Arise, MDI Centauri, Mercy Corps Social Venture Fund, and several business angels.
AgriAku will use the investment to grow its team by hiring aggressively in key areas such as operations, supply chain, product, and technology. Also, it will strengthen market penetration of its B2B agri-inputs marketplace nationwide. AgriAku will continue to innovate and deepen the capabilities of its product ecosystem to improve Indonesia’s agriculture value chain.
“Farmers, suppliers and retailers all face the same problems – volatility of supply and prices, inefficient manual workflows and limited access to formal financing. AgriAku’s B2B input marketplace platform is ideally positioned to improve price transparency and market access for all stakeholders in the agricultural inputs sector. Over time, we expect AgriAku to significantly improve farmer productivity and improve farmer livelihoods,” said Aditya Kamath, Partner, Go-Ventures.
Complete agricultural solution!
AgriAku is a young startup founded in 2021 by Irvan Kolonas (founder of Vasham, an Indonesian social enterprise in the agricultural sector) and Danny Handoko (ex-CEO of Airy, an Indonesian hospitality startup). It provides a range of complete agricultural equipment including seeds, agrochemicals, fertilizers, and equipment. Partners such as traders and farm shop owners of the company can use the complete agricultural solution to order saprotan (agricultural production facilities) at affordable prices. For this, partners have to download the Agri Aku app available on Google Play. With this app, orders can be made anytime and anywhere.
Notably, the B2B input marketplace platform facilitates agribusiness activities for suppliers, retailers and famers. The farming supplies that it provides are sourced from trustworthy, reliable suppliers and manufacturers and sold to agri-input retailers known as toko tani or farmer stores. These retailers act as the last mile agents to distribute products and services to small-holder farmers across Indonesia.
AgriAku operates across major cities in Indonesia such as Lampung, Gorontalo and will expand to other cities as well.
“Our marketplace is able to immediately increase profits of our users, through improved product discovery and transparent pricing to help farmers and the agri-input retailers to run their businesses more effectively. We benefit from strong network effects by tapping into the pre-existing relationships between retailers and farmers. With trust already existing between these players, it has allowed us to grow our user network rapidly at low acquisition costs resulting in high customer loyalty,” said Irvan Kolonas, President and co-Founder AgriAku.
Fastest-growing agritech startup
AgriAku is touted to be Indonesia’s fastest-growing agricultural B2B marketplace In nine months of its debut, the company has witnessed exponential growth. AgriAku has seen an average month-on-month growth of 200% in gross merchandise value over the past four months. Also, the number of active users on the platform has grown significantly with over 10,000 registered farmer stores on the platform.
“At AgriAku, we aim to help farmers and our local agri-input retail partners to progress and develop. The key to doing this well is to have strong discipline in executing strategies, which is spearheaded by our team in the field, who can demonstrate exactly how the technology platform works. Serve with heart and grow together for a better Indonesian Agricultural sector!” concluded Rezky Haryanto, COO AgriAku.
