Monk’s Hill leads Indonesian social commerce platform’s $11.5m round

Indonesia-based social ecommerce platform Dagangan has raised US$11.5 million in a series A funding round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.

MMS Group, K3 Ventures, Spiral Ventures, and Plug and Play Indonesia also participated in the round.

Team Dagangan / Photo credit: Dagangan

Dagangan uses a tech-enabled hub-and-spoke approach where they reach out to key opinion leaders such as village chiefs, microentrepreneurs, or community heads in rural areas. It then works with supply chain drivers, including producers and wholesalers of fast-moving consumer goods, to deliver group orders cultivated by the opinion leaders to consumers within 24 hours.

The startup also produces private label products such as groceries through partnerships with local farmers. These partnerships enable direct product delivery from farmers to users. This strategy reduces the cost of the products by 95% compared to other supply chain merchants throughout the country, claims the startup.

“Our vision is that each and every one of the 100 million individuals in the underserved rural communities in Indonesia will have easy access to basic and high-quality local daily necessities and goods at affordable prices,” said Ryan Manafe, CEO of Dagangan.

Dagangan was founded in 2019 by Manafe and Wilson Yanaprasetya. It will use the funds to grow its current range of over 20 private label products, including frozen foods, groceries and homeware appliances, and develop product features such as pay later, logistics pick-up, and delivery.

In addition, the startup will also hire talent, grow partnerships with the community, and continue to expand its footprint in tier-3 cities and tier-4 villages, including Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan.

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Dagangan has so far covered more than 5,000 villages, and it serves 20,000 active users through its network of 3,000 stock keeping units.