Kravve.co has just announced its successful fundraising of 1,255,000 RM to ECF (capital crowdfunding) throw it which involved a total of 159 investors with 11.11% of total equity offered. His highest individual investment was RM 222,500.
They are 250,000 RMS less than their goal of RM 1,500,000, but they managed to exceed their minimum target of RM 100,000.
For those who are unknown with Kravve.co, they are a homemade food market that functions as an Etsy for grocery stores and supermarkets, with the goal of enabling home chefs and micro-vendors to live from home through e-commerce.
They currently have more than 1,000 vendors on their platform and 70,000 users to date, and credited the pandemic as an opportunity to grow tenfold more than the previous year.
Currently, they are backed by two CVs that are 1337 Ventures, local, i SOSV, a global CV based in San Francisco from which they received US $ 100,000 (408,867 RM).
It’s not his first funding shoot
Phase prior to seed, Kravve get up US $ 5,000 in February 2018 and during its initial phase get up US $ 120,000 in March 2020. Its pre-seed phase was supported by 1337 Ventures, while its seed phase was supported by Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX) which is headquartered in Taipei.
As for what they plan to do with these new funds, Yong Lin, co-founder and CEO of kravve.co, shared that 20% would go to expansion in Singapore, 35% in marketing efforts and the remaining 45 % towards the force of the manpower.
“Next on our agenda is to work to be the leading impact-driven food technology company that focuses on empowering Southeast Asian micro-retailers, targeting 10,000 micro-food companies,” he added.
Riding On The Rising Trends
Kravve.co’s emphasis has always been on its role in managing inquiries, sales and delivery so that its salespeople can focus on production.
Companies with large quantities of orders would find this service attractive, as this would take away the headache of having to handle hundreds of orders manually on WhatsApp, especially if you are a small computer.
Kravve.co’s solutions can be assumed to have attracted investors due to the sharp rise in home micromarkets which also arose due to the pandemic. For example, some brands we wrote about recently are ButterBae, Dolç Hato, the cookie bar, FowlBoys, and more.
While many of these micro-enterprises gained strength on Instagram, as many of them are young and tech-savvy Malaysians, there is a part of the previous generation that may not be as digitally inclined. The latter can be left behind if it is not for places like Kravve.co, especially during the pandemic when everything has to be digitized for visibility.
Its ECF campaign also indicates promising support for industry platforms such as Poptron (a virtual bazaar platform for local microbrands) i GoodFinds (also for local microbrands). In fact, Poptron previously get up One million US dollars in initial funding earlier this year.
And so it’s no surprise that we’re seeing more similar platforms emerge, although Kravve.co has the advantage of having been established longer with a niche market focused solely on F&B micro-brands.
Featured Image Credit: Jean Heah and Teh Yong Lin from Kravve.co (Beamstart)
