Kravve.co has just announced their successful ECF (equity crowdfunding) fundraising of RM1,255,000 on pitchIN that involved a total of 159 investors with 11.11% total equity offered. Their highest individual investment was RM222,500.
They’re RM245,000 shy of their target of RM1,500,000 but managed to surpass their minimum target of RM100,000.
For those who are unfamiliar with Kravve.co, they’re a home-cooked meals marketplace that works like an Etsy for mom-and-pop food stores and groceries, aiming to empower home chefs and micro-sellers to make a living from home through e-commerce.
They currently have over 1,000 sellers on their platform as well as 70,000 users to date, and they credited the pandemic as an opportunity for them to grow 10 times more the previous year.
Currently, they’re backed by two VCs which are 1337 Ventures, a local one, and SOSV, a global VC based in San Francisco which they received US$100,000 (RM408,867) from.
Not Their First Funding Rodeo
Pre-seed phase, Kravve raised US$5,000 in February 2018, and during their seed phase, they’d raised US$120,000 in March 2020. Their pre-seed phase was backed by 1337 Ventures whereas their seed phase was backed by Mobile-Only Accelerator (MOX) which is headquartered in Taipei.
As for what they’re planning to do with these fresh funds, Yong Lin, the co-founder and CEO of kravve.co shared that 20% of it would go to expanding into Singapore, 35% on marketing efforts, and the remaining 45% towards building manpower strength.
“Next on our agenda is to work towards being the leading impact-driven food tech company that focuses on empowering micro-sellers across Southeast Asia, targeting 10,000 micro food businesses to come on board,” he added.
Riding On The Rising Trends
Kravve.co’s emphasis has always been on their role in managing inquiries, sales, and delivery so that their sellers could focus on production.
Businesses with high volumes of orders would find this service attractive, as this would take out the headache of having to manage hundreds of orders manually on WhatsApp especially if you’re a small team.
It can be surmised that Kravve.co’s solutions appealed to investors because of the sharp rise of home-based micro-sellers that cropped up over the pandemic too. For example, a few brands we wrote about recently are ButterBae, Sweet Hato, the Cookies Bar, FowlBoys, and more.
While a lot of these micro-businesses gained traction on Instagram as many of them are young and tech-savvy Malaysians, there’s a portion of them from the older generation that may not be as digitally-inclined. The latter may fall behind if it isn’t for sites like Kravve.co, especially during the pandemic when everything needs to be digitalised for visibility.
Their ECF campaign also signals promising support of platforms in the industry, such as Poptron (a virtual bazaar-like platform for local microbrands), and GoodFinds (also for local microbrands). In fact, Poptron previously raised US$1 million in seed funding earlier this year.
And thus, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing more similar platforms crop up, although Kravve.co holds the advantage of having been established longer with a marketplace niche that’s focused only on F&B microbrands as of now.
Featured Image Credit: Jean Heah and Teh Yong Lin from Kravve.co (Beamstart)