Indonesian agtech startup, Limakilo, announced that it has secured an undisclosed seed round of funding from East Ventures reports Deal Street Asia.

Founded by Walesa Danto, Martin Luter, Lisa Ayu Wulandari, and Arif Setiawan, Limakilo has developed a platform through which farmers can purchase agricultural products, with the aim of streamlining and increasing the level of efficiency within the distribution chain for farmers, and buyers according to e27.

Danto of Limakilo told Deal Street Asia that the company also aims to mitigate instability in commodity prices in Indonesia due to the presence of middlemen in the chain.

The company currently partners with fifteen produce farmers across Brebes, Bandung, and Yogyakarta, and plans to use the new funding to support its expansion to cities other than Jakarta, to increase its number of farmer partnerships, to support training in the use of the app while it works to forge new agreements with farmer associations.

“We use cargo to deliver [the product to Jakarta] and then [use] other delivery startups to bring it to customers in Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi,” LimaKilo co-founder Arief Setiawan told Tech in Asia. “We sell around one ton of onions in a month and 60 to 70 kilograms of organic vegetables,” he said.

Currently, Limakilo is focusing on red onions, for which demand is the third largest in Indonesia after rice and sugar, according to their company website. The startup has expanded its delivery capacity to between 700 and 1,000 tons per month, and if that capacity is achieved, it would account for two percent of the nation’s total consumption, reports Tech in Asia.

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Lynda Kiernan