TaniHub Group president Pamitra “Eka” Wineka said the company saw its gross revenue grow by a whopping 639 percent in 2020, propelled by an influx of demand at the onset of the pandemic. The growth is more than twice the 300 percent rate achieved in 2019.

“Last year was challenging for everyone, including us. But we are proud that we can grow amid the uncertainties,” he said in a virtual briefing on Jan. 21.

While the firm declined to specify a growth target for this year, Eka stated that “in general, start-up growth is always expected to exceed” the previous year’s rate.

He went on to say that, last year, the company was able to onboard more than 250.000 new users since the pandemic hit Indonesia in March, with the most popular items including chicken and dragon fruit. TaniHub was also able to fulfill 90 percent of demand for same-day delivery, company data showed.

The large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) imposed in several regions of the country to contain COVID-19 transmission, as well as health concerns for in-person store visits, helped spur the growth of the country’s online grocery platforms.

A 2020 survey by Facebook and Bain & Company revealed that consumers in Southeast Asia were buying groceries online almost three times more often than in 2019. The study indicated that online grocery platforms enjoy the highest level of penetration in the online retail market, with other categories, such as fashion and personal care, growing 1.4 times on average.

While only 20 percent of respondents in Indonesia said they bought groceries online in 2019, that number rose to 31 percent last year, the survey showed.

Similarly, management consulting company Redseer found that more than half of Indonesian respondents said their spending on e-grocery platforms had increased during the pandemic, while up to 60 percent said they would continue to buy groceries online in the future.

Redseer estimated that the gross merchandise value (GMV) of e-grocery platforms would grow 400 percent last year, while that of beauty and personal care was expected to increase by 80 percent, fashion by 40 percent and electronics by 20 percent.

Eka went on to say that, in the near future, TaniHub Group was expecting to close a new round of funding that he said would be the “biggest agritech funding in Southeast Asia.”

Last year, the company secured US$17 million as part of an extension round for its Series A funding. The investment brought TaniHub’s total equity funding to $29 million since 2016.

Last year’s funding is intended to help the company expand its services to up to 100,000 farmers by 2021, the company stated at the time.

Established in mid-2016, TaniHub Group operates three business arms: online food marketplace TaniHub, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform TaniFund and supply chain services unit TaniSupply. The e-marketplace allows consumers to buy fresh produce directly from farmers, while the P2P platform provides farmers with an alternative and legally registered source of loans.

“There will be challenges this year, but we are optimistic,” Eka said, adding that TaniHub was aiming to digitize the company’s business-to-business (B2B) ecosystem and automate its supply chain.

He also said that the company had set itself a target to onboard 10,000 farmers into TaniFund as well as disburse Rp 1 trillion ($71.2 million) in loans to farmers this year.

TaniFund disbursed Rp 89.2 billion in loans last year, according to the company’s own data.

Meanwhile, TaniHub Group CEO Ivan Arie Sustiawan said the company would continue to expand its operations to areas outside of Java and Bali.

“Our focus is to expand to Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Sumatra, and we also continue to export our products,” he told the press at the same event.

The export initiatives would benefit farmers, as they would help increase the value of their commodities, Ivan added.

TaniHub Group’s first packing and processing center (PPC) in Malang, East Java, has been operating since last year. The facility, Ivan said, was intended to support export-ready products.

The company previously said that it planned to develop such facilities in Majalengka regency, West Java, and in Medan, North Sumatra, in the near future, as the start-up wanted to build such facilities in every province nationwide.

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