US $11 M Series A funding received by TreeDots to tackle food wastage problem in SEA
TreeDots, a Singapore-based food surplus marketplace, has raised $11 million in a Series A fundraising round headed by East Ventures and Amasia of California.
Angel investors included bestselling novelist Nir Eyal (author of Hooked) and Singaporean actress Fiona Xie, as well as ACTIVE Fund, Seeds Capital, and angel investors.
TreeDots was founded in 2018 by Tylor Jong, Lau Jia Cai, and Nicholas Lim with the goal of addressing the “trillion-dollar” worldwide problem of food waste and loss while also reducing the carbon footprint connected with it.
TreeDots resells excess merchandise from suppliers to companies like restaurants and cafés, allowing them to buy food at a lower cost. Suppliers on the sell side of the network used to pay money to send their leftover items to the landfill, but now they can earn extra money by selling them on Treedots.
As part of its vertically integrated food supply chain ecosystem, the business also offers logistical services, such as cold-chain logistics provider TreeLogs and an online management interface to help suppliers. Upstream suppliers may concentrate their efforts on food processing and manufacturing as a result of this.
TreeDots has also established a social commerce network where customers may purchase these identical things at a reduced price. TreeDots delivers several orders to a single site in a group-buying manner, and neighbours pick up their things from this residence.
When compared to a regular e-commerce approach, the company argues that this strategy saves buyers money on shipping and reduces emissions.
TreeDots intends to preserve two million tonnes of food that would otherwise be wasted by acting as a catalyst for a modern-day food supply chain in the region. The corporation aims to reduce carbon emissions by 18 million tonnes by 2025.
It moved into Malaysia last year, with hopes for more regional expansion in the future. To accommodate the increased demand, the business has expanded its logistics optimization services to assist enterprise customers in creating more effective supply chains.
“Food loss is already a trillion-dollar problem, but what got us really excited was the fact that suppliers started to use the system for all of their revenue, not just food loss products,” said Roderick Purwana, managing partner at East Ventures.
“We realized that a grocery chain might not buy a chicken that’s too big or has a broken bone because it looks funny on their shelves. But F&B outlets don’t care because they will cut it, plate it and make it look nice before serving. So, if they can purchase essentially the same product at prices up to 90 percent cheaper than alternatives, they are very happy,” said Tylor Jong, co-founder, and CEO of TreeDots. “This original insight drove us to start an oversupplied foods marketplace to match supply and demand for these products.”
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted worldwide, owing to inefficient supply systems.
Methane emissions, which are 86 times more harmful to global warming than carbon dioxide, are also blamed on the burning or decomposition of oversupplied goods, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.
