Ex-Grab, Traveloka exec’s social commerce firm bags seed funding

Bakool, an Indonesia-based social commerce startup, announced that it has raised seed funding worth “several million” US dollars from Kleiner Perkins, Goodwater Capital, Insignia Ventures Partners, and Global Brain. Mari Elka Pangestu, who served as the country’s minister of trade from 2004 to 2011 and as minister of tourism and creative economy from 2011 to 2014, also joined the round.

Bakool’s co-founders Ivan Darmawan (left) and Stephanie Wongsoredjo / Photo credit: Bakool

Bakool runs a group-buying platform that offers fresh produce to consumers in Indonesia’s second-tier cities. It has a network of agents – mostly homemakers and community leaders – who aggregate demand and put in orders on the platform. The  goods will be sent to agents the next day.

The firm was founded in 2021 as a quick commerce service called Radius. In the last five months, it pivoted to the current social commerce model and changed its name.

It was established by former Traveloka and Grab executive Ivan Darmawan, a former executive at Traveloka and Grab, and Stephanie Wongsoredjo, who has more than 15 years of experience in the retail sector. Bakool is part of Y Combinator’s W22 batch.

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Other Indonesian startups in the social commerce space include Super, Dagangan, and Evermos. But specializing in fresh produce is what makes Bakool stand out from its peers, which focus more on FMCG and groceries, Darmawan told Tech in Asia.

“Fresh produce is significantly different from other commodities,” he explains, citing how the distribution process “mostly happens at night” and the “low availability” of supply chain networks in Tier 2 cities.

Bakool currently operates in Semarang and other cities in Central Java. The most popular items sold on the platform are chilies, garlic, eggs, and mangoes.