Heaptalk, Jakarta — ESB, Indonesia’s most extensive fully-integrated restaurant management SaaS platform, has seized a US$29 million Series B funding round led by Northstar Group and Alpha JWC Ventures. Several existing investors also followed the round, including BEENEXT, Vulcan Capital, and AC Ventures.
Prior to this fundraising round, ESB raised a total of US$10.6 million funding from Alpha JWC, Vulcan Capital, BEENEXT, AC Ventures, Skystar Capital, and Selera Kapital. With this fresh Series B funding, ESB aims to simplify payment solutions, provide working capital facilities, and expand productivity features to boost SME business sales.
Further, this startup will also present order and delivery channel management, deliver accounting capabilities and supply chain management, and enhance HRIS capability. Through these goals, ESB can amplify its position as the end-to-end F&B platform.
Expressing his appreciation for the latest investment, Co-Founder and CEO of ESB, Gunawan Woen, voiced, “We are proud to welcome Northstar Group as the new shareholder in this round and appreciate the continuous support from our existing shareholders, Alpha JWC Ventures, BEENEXT, ACV, and Vulcan Capital for their continued confidence in us,”
Leading the ESB’s investment round, Managing Director of Northstar Group, Carlson Lau, affirmed, “We have been tracking ESB’s journey and are delighted to see such a mature product and developed go-to-market strategy emerging out of this region. ESB has performed well even against better capitalized global competitors in winning over and onboarding international F&B brands in Indonesia. ESB is now rolling out another SaaS product empowering F&B SMEs, and we are excited to partner with Gunawan and his team to help scale ESB’s solution to the rest of Southeast Asia and beyond,”
ESB is an all-in-one culinary business operations software provider with a cloud-based SaaS solution spanning a front-end order-taking app, Point-of-Sales (POS) system, kitchen operations software, and back-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Through ESB apps, F&B merchants also access ESB’s third-party providers for ingredient supplies, food delivery, and digital payments.
Founded in 2018 by Gunawan Woen, Eka Prasetya, Setiadi Prawiryo Moeljadi, and Dwi Prawira, ESB aims to support F&B businesses in enhancing their profitability by using technology to augment sales and improve operational efficiency. Drawing on decades of experience in the F&B operations and supply chain, ESB’s founders created a unique cloud-based technology solution to replace multiple traditional hardware-based systems.
ESB’s Co-Founder and COO, Eka Prasetya, conveyed, “Besides superior product offerings, our other mission is accessibility. We believe that all sizes of businesses deserve to have good support. Thus, we will expand our services to fit large, established F&B groups and small and medium businesses with flexible and affordable fee structures. We want to grow together with our fellow stakeholders to achieve greatness,”
Solutions for the fast-growing F&B industry amidst the economic recovery
The pandemic has encouraged F&B merchants to adopt leaner operations and explore new sales channels. Simultaneously, primary stakeholders along the F&B value chain, from customers to ingredient suppliers, have rapidly adopted digital solutions.
Moreover, rising costs as the commodity price inflation in early 2022 has spurred F&B traders to optimize their cost structure further. This increase has also led to the higher adoption of productivity tools that allow for end-consumer self-service, internal workflow automation, and food waste reduction. Observing these issues, ESB is well primed to tap into these trends.
“We see F&B merchants, SMEs, as our equal partners. As a partner, we intend to bolster our partners, to generate more sales and boost their efficiencies, which in the end, will help them increase their profit. Likewise, we can ensure their sustainability, bankability, and growth by achieving these goals. When our partners grow, ESB grows. That’s how I see it,” Gunawan said.
The Partner of Alpha JWC Ventures, Eko Kurniadi, perceived that this startup had reached more fantastic and exciting milestones since AJV’s investment a year ago. Eko noticed this SaaS platform has significantly broadened the pool of F&B brands, containing businesses of any sizes and complexity and increasing ESB’s end-to-end solutions for existing customers. Thus, Eko shared his eagerness to continue the partnership with Gunawan to crystallize ESB’s next evolution together.
Following the round, Founder and Managing Partner of AC Ventures, Adrian Li, uttered, “ESB’s technology platform has delivered an exceptional, cloud-based, end-to-end F&B solution to assist restaurants in minimizing the costs, tackle their operations, and scale online delivery. This application is set to revolutionize the multi-billion dollar dine-in takeaway market for Indonesia,”
“ESB has empowered thousands of Indonesia’s restaurants during the pandemic and has become a preferred app to enhance restaurants’ operations and performance. The founding team has performed excellent execution and resilience to lead them to grow faster and ride on the growth momentum since last year. We are excited to be on the journey and this long-term partnership with ESB,” Faiz Rahman, the Partner of BEENEXT, said in a statement.
