[Weekly Updates] Bukalapak's New Logo; $17 Million Funding for TaniHub; and More

Bukalapak has announced the usage of new logo following the succession of its CEO. In the highlight last week were series of funding announcement by TaniHub, Kargo, and ProSpark. Lastly, East Ventures and its portfolio initiate crowdfunding scheme to help financing Covid-19 test kit.

Bukalapak Introduces The New Logo

Bukalapak is officially launched a new logo. The new logo introduced only three months after the reins of company leadership were transferred from the Co-Founder to a professional. With this new face, Bukalapak intends to benefit more people with the features and technologies in their ecosystem.

Bukalapak team told DailySocial that the rebranding initiative had long been prepared. At the age of 10, Bukalapak remains the same, trying to help raise the standard of living of its users in the whole ecosystem.

Bukalapak said the new company’s logo contains 4 meanings: Excitement, Fun, Strength, and Bukalapak. The meaning of the new Bukalapak logo illustrates that Bukalapak is ready to become a platform with answers to all the needs of its users to get or sell goods.

TaniHub Secures 285 Billion Rupiah Worth of Series A+ Funding

TaniHub Group announced to secure series A+ funding worth of US$17 million or around 285 billion Rupiah. This is the follow on round of the series A last May 2019.

The latest round was led by Openspace Ventures and Intudo Ventures. Also involved in this round, UOB Venture Management, Vertec Ventures, BRI Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Golden Gate Ventures. In total, TaniHub has obtained Rp462 billion funding since 2016.

The additional funding will be allocated to tighten business position by expanding services, both for farmers and customers. They will also focus to improve operational, such as the implementation of automation in processing and packaging centers.

Coca-Cola’s CVC, “Amatil X” Pours Its First Investment to Kargo Technology

Following its official launch in early 2019, Coca-Cola Amatil Indonesia (Amatil Indonesia), through the Amatil X corporate venture capital (CVC) initiative, has established strategic partnerships with some startups in Indonesia.

The latest collaboration is with Kargo Technologies, it is said to help them expand the business strategy and logistics digitization process in Indonesia.

Kargo Technologies is a logistics marketplace that connects companies and truck service providers. In the middle of last year, they obtained funding of $7.6 million (more than 107 billion Rupiah) led by Sequoia India and the 10100 Fund – the latter one was founded by Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick.

ProSpark Provides Edtech Solution in B2B Segment

Founded in 2018, ProSpark offers a Learning Management System (LMS) that allows companies to train, certify, transfer knowledge, and collaborate. In particular targeting B2B segment by providing a learning management system to improve staff comprehension.

In order to accelerate business development, ProSpark has secured pre-seed funding led by Agaeti Ventures. Prasetia Dwidharma and an angel investor, Adi Adisaputro, also participated in this round.

ProSpark plans to use the funds to expand its commercial footprint and strengthen its position in the market. The company is also working on plans for regional expansion across SE Asia in the future.

East Ventures and Its Portfolios Initiated "Indonesia Pasti Bisa" Project

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak throughout Indonesia, East Ventures along with some of its portfolios have collaborated to make a contribution. They’ve launched the crowdfunding platform named Indonesia Pasti Bisa to collect funds and channel it for Nusantics to produce its own Covid-19 test kit.

There are three of East Ventures’ portfolios took part in this initiative. First and the main player is Nusantics. The deep-tech genomic startup has just announced the funding last week and currently developing a test kit for Covid-19. The project is part of Nusantics’ job as a member of the Research Force and Technology Innovation Task Force for Handling Covid-19 (TFRIC19) formed by BPPT.

The company to produce 100 sets of qPCR as prototypes and massive production for 100,000 test kits. In time, Nusantics will be launching the whole-genome sequencing to map the virus causing Covid-19 in Indonesia. The genomic mapping of various kinds of the virus becomes important due to the virus mostly mutating to different kind of form based on the environment.