Warung Pintar grows user base 20x following evolution and strategic shake-up

Since the time it was an up-and-coming startup, Warung Pintar has been widely known for its iconic yellow prefabricated smart kiosks – 5,000 of them had popped up all over Greater Jakarta and a couple of other cities by January 2020.

But things changed when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Indonesia.

As social-distancing restrictions pummeled the retail sector, Warung Pintar decided to modify its scope. Instead of working exclusively with prefabricated Warung Pintar-branded warungs, the company broadened its base to include other, traditional mom and pop shops – an approach similar to the Mitra Bukalapak model.

Warung Pintar’s user / Photo credit: Warung Pintar

That change saw Warung Pintar’s user base jump to 100,000 warungs by the start of 2021. But along with the significantly larger user base, the company also pivoted away from serving the general needs of these kiosks, and instead began focusing solely on the supply chain.

“The supply chain aspect [is warungs’] main pain point, especially in the pandemic era. We want to solve that big problem first, then go ahead to solve other problems one by one,” Agung Bezharie, Warung Pintar’s co-founder and chief executive, tells Tech in Asia.

Doubling down on the new strategy, Warung Pintar acquired another startup in Q1 of 2021 – business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce firm Bizzy Digital. The acquisition beefed up the company’s user base even further to 500,000 warungs, which make up 14% of such stores in Indonesia.

Out of that number, over 106,000 warungs actively transact on Warung Pintar’s platform every month. Solely in terms of physical goods transactions, the company claims that this is the biggest active user base among all other startups in the country that target warungs – even when compared with Mitra Bukalapak. The comparison omits specialty outlets (such as phone credit kiosks) and individual agents.

The changes in Warung Pintar’s game plan come as more companies shift their focus to areas outside Indonesia’s top-tier cities. From an ecommerce standpoint, much of the strategy here revolves around online-to-offline and B2B solutions.

Judging by the moves that Warung Pintar’s peers have made, it’s a hot space for both tech companies and their investors. Most recently, GudangAda raised over US$100 million for its asset-light B2B marketplace for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products.

An expanded ecosystem

The Bizzy acquisition officially marked Warung Pintar’s evolution into a company that serves a wider range of players in the retail ecosystem and focuses on physical products, with more features and diverse revenue streams. Subsequently, Bizzy’s business was consolidated under a single umbrella called the Warung Pintar Group.

Bezharie will hold the position of chief executive at the combined entity, while Bizzy’s chief executive, Andrew Mawikere, will become the president of the consolidated firm.

But Warung Pintar’s shift in strategy had been in the works long before the acquisition. One significant step in the new direction was the launch of the Grosir Pintar app, which allows wholesalers to sell inventory directly to warungs, in September 2020. Currently, there are more than 600 wholesalers who use the app, and each one can transact with around 300 warungs in its surrounding areas.

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