Behind the Rumors around "Chilibeli" Social Commerce

Social commerce startup Chilibeli is temporarily closing its operations, at least until the end of this month. Public's been told that the reason is server relocation and deep cleaning of resources. The employees are getting laid off and promised that this month's salary will be disbursed soon.

The management is said to have conveyed the employees that they had tried their best to save the company. According to reliable sources, Chilibeli is still having difficulty on securing the Series B fundraising since last year.

The company is reportedly considering to sell the business. Two unicorn startups are said to have explored potential acquisitions, however, the strongest candidate is rising. WeBuy, a similar startup from Singapore, is highly rumored to be taking over Chilibeli's business.

WeBuy has been available in Indonesia since September 2021. This company is a portfolio of MDI Ventures, Wavemaker, KB Financial Group, and Rocket Internet.

We haven't received a confirmation from Chilibeli's management and its investors regarding this matter.

Chilibeli was founded by Alex Feng, Damon Yue, and Matt Li in 2019. They announced a Series A funding round of $10 million in March 2020. The round was led by Lightspeed Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, Sequoia Surge, Kinesys Group, and Alto Partners.

The company relies on the C2M (customer to manufacturer) business concept in bridging fresh products from farmers to final consumers in a number of communities. The concept exists to encourage logistics efficiency and ensure product freshness to reach consumers' hands.

Chilibeli was participated in Surge's Accelerator Program batch 2.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian