Malaysian startup Kravve.co raises RM1.25mil, to expand into Singapore

Teh (second from left) and his team are expanding to Singapore as part of their target to sign up 10,000 more mom-and-pop businesses. — Kravve.co

Local startup Kravve.co, which bills itself as an online bazaar for artisanal homemade food, is expanding out of Malaysia to work with more mom-and-pop businesses following an RM1.25mil fundraising round.

The online marketplace, which enables home cooks and small food businesses to sell their goods online, raised the sum through equity crowdfunding (ECF) platform pitchIN, in exchange for 11.11% of its equity.

Its CEO & co-founder Teh Yong Lin said the company has signed on 1,000 sellers and 70,000 users across the country since launching two years ago. With the funding, they intend to increase the number of sellers by 10 fold.

“The pandemic was definitely a factor in accelerating digital transformation. Covid-19 has pushed small businesses over the technology tipping point and transformed their businesses forever.

“With our platform, they are able to service more clients than they can ever imagine before and solve their headaches of having to manually handle each order that comes in for them,” he said, in a press release.

Teh revealed that despite the pandemic, the company grew 10-fold from their consumer facing business during the last financial year.

He said Kravve.co’s system empowered micro-sellers to make a full income from home, using a site with full e-commerce capability that is simple enough to create in five minutes.

“We help automate the manual selling process end-to-end, making a 16-step process into just two steps, with tech automation. This way moms and pops have more time to make more products, and sell more of them,” Teh added.

He said from the funds raised, 20% would be allocated to expansion plans into Singapore, while 35% will be spent on marketing efforts and 45% allocated for increasing company manpower.

“Next on our agenda is to work towards being the leading impact driven food tech company that focuses on empowering micro sellers across South-East Asia, targeting 10,000 of micro food businesses to come onboard,” added Teh.