Here's Secai Marche! They're a Japanese B2B farm-to-table startup in Malaysia, and they've just raised a 210M JPY (~$1.6M) Series A!

• They source over 4,000 items, from fresh fruit and vegetables to eggs and seafood, directly from farmers in SEA and Japan.
• They work with over 500 retailers and HoReCa customers (aka, hotels, restaurants and caterers).

Investor check. The Agribusiness Investment & Consultation Co, Spiral Ventures Asia Fund I and existing investor Beyond Next Ventures also joined in!

• This takes their total funding raised to ~$4.5M.
• They last raised a ~1.5M Pre-Series A from Rakuten Ventures and more in 2021.

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🧐 Why it matters

SEA's food service distribution industry is huge, but it's still extremely fragmented and inefficient.

• So, Secai Marche brings in-house software and other solutions to smooth out the F&B supply chain!

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👇🏼 How they do it

Secai Marche connects farmers with F&B businesses to buy high-quality products at competitive prices directly from the farm.

Apart from that. They've also built up their warehouse management and fulfillment systems for perishable goods and their cold supply chain.

• It covers 300+ farmers. These systems are built to bring the goods through the entire journey — from farm to end-user.
• By optimizing their supply chain and keeping to a minimum lead time for deliveries, their wastage rate is less than 1%.

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🔍 Spot the difference

We know! We covered a similar startup from Indonesia (yup, EdenFarm) yesterday, and other similar ones like Kamereo and FreshKet exist! So, how's Secai Marche different?

They'll offer an end-to-end fulfillment solution open to all farmers, which means they'll have a wider range of products and more transparency.

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🔜 What's next

They'll focus on developing their demand forecasting system and optimizing their truck routing, especially as they expand!