Esensi Solusi Buana (ESB) today (15/3) announced series A funding worth $3 million or 43.2 billion Rupiah. The investment was led by Beenext with the participation of Skystar Capital, Selera Kapital, Innovation Partners, and a previous round investor, AC Ventures.
The fresh funding will be focused on developing features and technology, including extensive partnerships with restaurants to create a more inclusive ecosystem. ESB alone provides a SaaS platform for digitizing the culinary business, which includes ordering systems, POS (Point of Sales), KDS (Kitchen Display System), CDS (Customer Display System), loyalty platforms, and ERP.
Regarding market size, based on research, the F&B business in Indonesia contributes around $57 billion in annual revenue. The trend continues to grow along with the increasing number of middle-class consumers. Unfortunately, the pandemic is on its way to drop the culinary business order, impacting 80% of business players.
“We built ESB in 2018 to introduce automation and reduce costs for F&B outlets […] Today we are also helping clients improve their operations and build more resilient businesses during the pandemic,” ESB’s Co-Founder & CEO, Gunawan Woen said.
One of its popular features allows culinary outlets to provide delivery. ESB also released the EZ Order application for both merchant and driver-partners.
“Previously invested in Moka (acquired by Gojek), we are very excited about a platform with the potential to revolutionize the way merchants and vendors operate. ESB’s data-driven and hardware-agnostic approach enables the platform to solve pressing problems for today’s sellers […] This current round will allow ESB to accelerate their growth and seize closer opportunities in the F&B market,” AC Ventures’ Managing Partner, Adrian Li said.
In an earlier interview with DailySocial, Gunawan said that restaurants will lose income starting from 10% (even more) due to inefficiency. Therefore, three aspects need to be improved, including order & outlet management, HQ & operations management, and purchase & vendor management. These solutions can be resolved by technology.
In addition, there are several other digital platforms that also serve a similar market share. For example, DigiResto, developed by MCAS, was recently received investment from the logistics company SiCepat. With a concept that is more integrated with cloud kitchens, the “decacorn” Gojek and Grab also have special services to democratize culinary merchants’ business processes, through the GoBiz and GrabMerchant applications.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian