Indonesian agritech startup gets seed funding from East Ventures

LimaKilo, an Indonesian startup born out of a state-sponsored hackathon, announced today it received seed funding from East Ventures. (Disclosure: East Ventures is also an investor in Tech in Asia. See our ethics statement for more info).

LimaKilo works in the agriculture sector. It connects farmers directly with consumers, cutting out the middlemen who normally control the produce’s path to potential buyers. This convoluted route to market results in marked up prices and leaves farmers with few choices. LimaKilo aims to change that.

The LimaKilo app lets potential buyers purchase directly from the farmer and arranges delivery to the customer.

For now, it focuses mainly on one type of fresh produce: red onions – an Indonesian staple that is grown predominantly in a region of Java called Brebes. But some other vegetables are also in the mix.

“We use cargo to deliver [the product to Jakarta] and then [use] other delivery startups to bring it to customers in Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi,” LimaKilo co-founder Arief Setiawan told Tech in Asia about a month ago. “We sell around one ton of onions in a month and 60 to 70 kilograms of organic vegetables,” he said at that time.

LimaKilo now works with 15 farmers in the Brebes area. Its capacity for delivery has risen to about 700 to 1000 tons a month, the startup claims in a statement released today. Were it actually shipping that much, it would represent two percent of the national consumption.

LimaKilo is one among of a handful of companies selected by the government in its program to bring digital disruption to the agriculture sector.

In April, president Joko Widodo kicked off the initiative, announcing his administration’s commitment to support startups that will help farmers reap the benefits of digital technology.