Heaptalk, Jakarta — A Smart Farming startup, Beleaf has completed its seed round of USD2 million led by Alpha JWC Ventures and backed by BRI Ventures’ Sembrani Nusantara, MDI-Finch Capital’s Arise, and several leading angel investors.
With this new seed round fund, Beleaf will improve its technology infrastructure, build a powerful team, and double its resources, consisting of the R&D farms opening and farming communities in West Java. Besides its farming-as-a-service side, the company will expand its in-house brand through a new mass-market brand augmentation, Seikat, to its existing premium brand and include more varieties in its lineup.
Leading this investment round, Partner of Alpha JWC Ventures, Eko Kurniadi, stated, “These past three years, Beleaf has proven its performance consistently, from harvest quality and operating efficiency to farming unit economics. They are now in a unique position to expand their technology footprint through their Beleaf OS and become a major player in the alternative farming scene in Indonesia. We are very excited with what we have seen so far and thrilled to join forces with Amrit to bring Beleaf to improve the welfare of Indonesian farmers and the quality of Indonesian agriculture products,”
Beleaf aims to offer end-to-end services as a complete ‘Farming as a Service product: touching operations, distribution, and offtaking – connecting farms, distributors, and retailers in one integrated ecosystem.
This Farming-as-a-Service (FaaS) model is hoped to answer Indonesia’s challenges where despite being an agricultural country, its potential remains unoptimized, and its agricultural import remains high. Based on National Statistics Agency’s data, the Indonesian fruits and vegetable market size is currently USD 33 billion, with the opportunity to grow to USD 56 billion by 2026.
On the other hand, farming costs are expected to increase due to increasing costs of inputs, poor technology adoption, reduction in the farming workforce, and inefficient logistics due to fragmentation. Beleaf strives to address these challenges by improving farming workforce productivity, reducing infrastructure costs through scalability, and eventually reducing farming costs, sustaining competitive prices for local vegetables and fruits.
“Why only vegetables and fruits? We’re a firm believer in starting from what we know best. We have achieved proof-of-concept in our farms, and this year, we managed to scale our model. We’re ready to accelerate our growth and pilot our geographic expansion. We have started with vegetables and fruits and will explore other plant groups for which we can replicate this model,” The Founder and CEO of Beleaf, Amrit Lakhiani, said.
Founded in 2019, Beleaf is an intelligent farming company that aims to use its agricultural expertise and technology to improve the yields and productivity of local farmers and the livelihoods of farmers across Indonesia. The company started as a premium hydroponic brand offering multiple varieties of vegetables and fruits, ranging from leafy greens to melons. With the learnings and experience from managing their farms, Beleaf started to expand its product to technology-enabled farm management this year.
Powered by big data and IoT to enable localized precision farming, Beleaf currently focuses on three main features: control, automation, and management. The platform monitors a farm’s seeding, temperature, nutrients, positioning, airflow, humidity, irrigation, and packaging. All data gathered from these processes will then power its machine learning for the farm and Beleaf’s continuous improvement, as well as research and development of future solutions.
Amrit claimed the company partner would experience an increase in its consistency, productivity, and quality of harvest once they used Beleaf Operating System. In addition, he elaborated that users can operate with fewer resources to promote higher profits and environmental sustainability.
Beleaf currently works with 14 farms in West Java, spanning over 80 hectares and producing over 70 tons of fresh produce per month. Its in-house brand supplies 15 supermarkets with 110 outlets, eight e-commerce platforms, and over ten restaurant outlets. With its experience and technology, the team seeks to improve the productivity, quality, and livelihood of all farmers across Indonesia to reduce the dependency on imported fruits ad vegetables while bringing Indonesia’s produce to a global standard.
Supporting this funding round, Chief Investment Officer at BRI Ventures, Markus Rahardja, looks forward to the investment that could accelerate Indonesia’s agri-tech in solving the demand for a healthier and sustainable farming sector. This round has also emphasized BRI Ventures’ stance to focus on the financially healthy, environmentally friendly, and sustainable.
