Jakarta, Indonesia — Astro, a platform that enables 15-minute grocery delivery to customers, has raised US$60m in a Series B to continue its mission to make people’s life easier by developing a modern, on-demand platform. The new round was led by Accel, Citius and Tiger Global bringing the total investment to more than US$90m since Astro started in Sep 2021. Existing investors also participated namely AC Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, and Lightspeed, among others.
The funds raised will be used to reach more customers and enrich product capabilities to provide an even better customer experience, as well as to expand the team size in 2022.
Today, Astro’s 15-minutes delivery service is operating in nearly 50 locations across Jakarta Broader Metro Area. Since the last round of Series A, the company revenue has grown more than 10 times as well as achieving much higher efficiency to deliver to customers. The team has also grown significantly with more than 200 people, whom they refer to internally as ‘Astronauts’ while enabling work from anywhere setup to accommodate flexibility during this pandemic environment.
Factors like positive consumer reception and organic growth of cohorts result in a high-growth momentum for the company.
Vincent Tjandra, co-founder and CEO of Astro, said, “Our mission at Astro is to make people’s lives simpler and easier. Our Astronauts have continuously served customers when they need us the most, especially during the last Omicron COVID-19 spike where Indonesia experienced an unprecedented number of cases.”
Tjandra adds, “We are excited to partner with Accel, Citius and Tiger Global to accelerate our meaningful mission. We will continuously focus on building a great company with great talents across Indonesia and delivering a great customer experience.”
For Astro, this is just the beginning as groceries in Indonesia is one of the biggest retail sectors, however digital penetration in the sector is one of the lowest at 0.4% compared to the 10% penetration of e-commerce. With the pandemic driving digital adoption, the opportunity is large with e-grocery in Indonesia and is poised to become a US$6b opportunity by 2025. This represents a billion dollar opportunity being unlocked every single year.
