Heaptalk.com, Jakarta – Sayurbox is an online platform with a farm-to-table business concept that directly provides fresh, quality, and healthy products from local Indonesian farmers and producers. A healthy lifestyle has stimulated the emergence of market demand for healthy food products, in which it becomes the objective of the emergence of businesses model in fresh and organic products, especially vegetables, fruits, and meat.
Based on the high market demand for businesses in organic vegetables and fruits, it is quite problematic to have a long chain from farmers to consumers. This chain can be in farmers’ form as suppliers of fresh vegetables and fruits, collected by collectors/mediators in rural areas, entering the micro-market, and then marketed to the macro market.
Depart from this problem, Amanda Susanti (Founder & CEO Sayurbox), Rama Notowidigdo (Co-Founder Sayurbox), and Metha Trisnawati (Sayurbox Co-Founder) to present digital technology based on mobile applications and websites. The application was first launched in July 2016 as a digital platform that facilitates consumers to access fresh-and-healthy-products directly from local farmers and producers and cut and cut very long links to improve local farmers’ and producers’ welfare.
As its progress has entered its 5th year, the startup which has bagged funding from Patamar Capital of US $ 300 thousand or equivalent to Rp. 4.2 billion, has become one of the fresh-and-healthy-product delivery services that many people most rely on during the Corona pandemic.
“Frankly, I feel happy to be able to solve problems. Since I was a child, at first, I started this business because I was making gardens for fun. Then I thought, why don’t we run this business model digitally and apply it widely” said the woman who was listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Industry category, Manufacturing & Energy 2019, shared stories and tips on success in a live streaming event held by Tokopedia with the theme “The Future is Equal”.
During the live streaming, Amanda also shared her experience by telling the beginning of the development of Sayurbox in 2016. Unexpectedly, selling and delivering app-based fresh-and-healthy-products was her first tied up business that was immediately running successfully.
“I’ve always liked to build new things and solve problems. From school to college, I often made a side business. (Although on my side) the most important thing was to learn from that experience. Well, back from college, I was working and fun building gardens. There is a problem in the distribution chain of farmers who do not have access to the market, “said Amanda.
During the operation, the business model in a technology-based company that deals with agriculture and plantations like this has problems and does not always run smoothly. The products marketed are agricultural products that are very dependent on the weather and highly possible to experience crop failure for local farmers and producers.
To maintain a sustainable and continuous supply chain, Amanda revealed that Sayurbox is taking an approach by building a continuous partnership with local farmers as partners. Also, Sayurbox is responsible for providing education so that farmers can produce products of superior quality.
“In addition to educating of how to produce products of superior quality, we also educate farmers to be closer and familiar to gadgets as a social media approach to consumers so that they can streamline their business, as well as educate about product packaging to maintain the customers’ trust”, remained Amanda.
In selecting the local farmers/partners process, Amanda explained that Sayurbox initially went into the field to find and target farmers willing to become partners. Sayurbox has specific standards and parameters in selecting partners, such as how the planting process is carried out, harvesting products free of pesticides, having organic certificates, and how farmers usually carry out the product distribution process to consumers.
After experiencing expansion and being well known by the market, several partners and local farmers come to Sayurbox to offer their flagship products. However, Sayurbox does a curation process to consistently maintain their quality and provide the best service to consumers. Therefore local farmers/producers must have and meet the standards and parameters set by Sayurbox.
Innovation inside the Business Model and User Experience
There are many values that Sayurbox has successfully conveyed, especially in deconstructing the conventional process in which people generally access fresh-and-healthy-products by visiting the market directly. However, from the user experience point of view, Sayurbox’s presence is to shorten the cycle.
“The Sayurbox ordering system is pre-order, thus minimizing the number of fresh products wasted (waste). After consumers order, Sayurbox will aggregate the number of consumer orders and inform partner farmers about the number of fresh products harvested. Then we sent the freshly harvested products to the Sayurbox hub for immediate packaging and delivery to consumers according to their requests, “said Amanda.
The transaction process carried out by Sayurbox in serving consumers is as follows: first, Sayurbox will be an online guide that will direct consumers to farmers or product producers selected by consumers through websites or mobile applications. Second, Sayurbox chooses two days in a week to harvest the product that consumers want, Wednesday and Saturday chosen.
For that, consumers must place an order and make payments two days before the harvest day. This deadline aims for farmers and producers of fresh products to have time to dig, climb, cut, and harvest the products shipped to consumers.
Sayurbox, through the SayurBox QC (Quality Checker) team, will guarantee the harvesting process using the double-check method, sorting products, packaging products in Sayurbox boxes/boxes, and distributing fresh products in a short period and not exceeding 24 hours so that they can be directly addressed and accepted by consumers.
This process is employed so that consumers can guarantee the quality and level of freshness of the product received. The User Interface (UI) of the Sayurbox website and application is one of the things that play an essential role in attracting consumer interest. Determining a user-friendly UI makes this application easily accessible to various groups of people from ages, social strata, and community groups.
Currently, Sayurbox has served more than 3 thousand consumers in the Jakarta, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Depok areas, and this number continues to grow every month and already offers 300 types of vegetables and fruits and already has 50 farmer partners who join Sayurbox.
Then, the monetization strategy implemented by Sayurbox is through the percentage of profit (margin) from each product sale to consumers. Apart from the profit percentage, Sayurbox also has monetization of the product consignment system from partner manufacturers who sell their products through the Sayurbox platform. For payment options, Sayurbox provides payment options via bank transfer, credit card, and virtual bank account transfer.
