Quick Commerce Startup Bananas Is Reportedly Received Seed Funding, Soon to Debut

Another online grocery platform arise. It's called "Bananas", this service applies the quick commerce concept with 10 minutes delievery guaranteed. The product categories ranged from meat, vegetables, drinks, and various other daily needs.

Based on the website, in the early stage, Bananas is available for users in the Kelapa Gading, Sudirman, and Senopati areas -- soon to be available in Kuningan, Senayan, PIK, and surrounding areas.

Regarding funding, based on our source, the company also secured seed investment from a number of investors, including East Ventures and Arise.

In terms of purchasing, users can download the Bananas app on the Android or iOS platform. The app will confirm whether it is within the coverage area. If it is available, you can continue to order items according to the product SKUs.

After the payment is completed, the order will be shipped within 10 minutes after the packing finished. After the goods are shipped and received, the user has 10 minutes to make sure the order is correct. The delivery is carried out by Bananas trained partners.

Bananas was founded by Mario Gaw and Kristian Frits, they curently also participating in the Y Combinator (W22) program. Mario himself is quite familiar in the digital startup industry, he used to be Tiket.com's CPO, Co-Founder of Cashbac, CEO of Dimo, General Manager of Rumah123.com and several executive positions in other digital companies.

Online groceries innovation in Indonesia

Previously, Astro came up with the same concept. The company recently announced a series A funding of IDR 387 billion. In Indonesia, the quick commerce concept is still relatively new, however, several overseas markets have already validated the business. For example in India, there is Zepto with a similar service. In Europe there is also Gorilla platform.

Quick commerce is basically one of the existing online grocery models. Previously, the Indonesian market had been introduced to the online grocery platform with Happy Fresh or Sayurbox. Although they do not guarantee fast delivery, they are able to deliver orders on the same day with an in-house logistics fleet.

Another concept is in the form of on-demand services, for example, presented by Titipku. They connect Jatiper (partners who shop for goods) scattered in various traditional markets to buy and deliver orders from consumers. Titipku currently accommodates more than 100 markets with nearly 500 thousand users.

Apart from that, unicorns also offer grocery-related sub-services by utilizing their ecosystem and platform. For example, Gojek with GoMart, Grab with GrabFresh, to Blibli with BlibliMart. Blibli seems serious enough to work on the potential of online grocery, last year they just completed a corporate action to acquire a majority stake in the parent company Ranch Market.

On the other hand, several retail companies have also begun to intensify its digital transformation by providing delivery services through applications. Indomaret did it with the KlikIndomaret application and website.

According our observation, the following are Indonesia's online grocery platforms with the fastest user growth based on rankings in the Shopping category and the number of downloads:

The existing online grocery business models will ultimately provide flexibility for consumers. Moreover, since the pandemic, many people are considering to purchase their needs online to avoid crowds and physical contact. However, the progress of the retail business is also expected to have an impact on industry players – including MSMEs, market traders, to farmers – by including them in the supply chain.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian