Segari raises seed funding round

Indonesia: In Indonesia, one of the major problems facing the agriculture industry is the existence of multiple layers between the farmer and the end consumer.

As a result, farmers fail to obtain the right price for their produce and are forced to sell them for a song, with the middlemen taking the bigger chunk.

Segari, a startup born in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, wants to address this problem using technology, and it has already caught the attention of the region’s top VCs.

The grocery startup has just announced that it has secured what claims to be one of the largest seed funding rounds in Indonesia. Led by Singapore’s early-stage VC firm Beenext, it also saw participation from AC Ventures, Saison Capital, and a few undisclosed angel investors.

Segari will use the capital to build the infrastructure needed from upstream to downstream while maintaining the quality of the produce.

“Although 30 percent of Indonesia’s workforce is engaged in agriculture in one way or the other, many inefficiencies still exist in the industry. The existence of multiple layers between the farmer and the end customers is one,” said Segari co-founder Yosua Setiawan.

“While commerce is being disrupted by Tokopedia and Shopee, and the transportation industry by gojek and Grab, the agriculture sector has seen very little innovation. Segari wants to change this,” he added.

The company was founded in 2020 by the trio of Setiawan (CEO), Farand Anugerah (COO) and Farandy Ramadhana (CTO). A silver medalist at the National Physics Olympics, Setiawan has previously worked at Boston Consulting Group and Traveloka.

Anugerah, a Harvard Business School alumnus, has in the past worked at Grab Indonesia & Philippines. Ramadhana is an alumnus of UC Berkeley and worked at Amazon, Google Ads team in Silicon Valley, and Moka before co-founding Segari.