Singapore-headquartered B2B agritech startup Glife Technologies has raised SGD 11 million (USD 8 million) in a Series A funding round led by Heliconia Capital, a wholly-owned investment subsidiary of Temasek.
Hibiscus Fund, a VC fund under management by Malaysia’s RHL Ventures, and South Korea’s KB Investment also participated in the funding round. The fresh funds bring Glife’s total funding to SGD 14 million (USD 10 million).
Founded in 2018, Glife operates a marketplace that aggregates farm sources to directly supply restaurants. The company’s platform also allows businesses to monitor seed-to-table supply chain distribution. Glife serves over 1,000 farmers and 900 merchants across Southeast Asia, according to the firm.
The fresh funding will allow the company to launch operations in Malaysia and Indonesia in Q1 2022. The firm will also use the investment to inject capital into Novitee, an F&B solutions firm that offers point-of-sale, QR code ordering, payments, purchasing inventory, and supply chain management software to different outlets across Southeast Asia and China. Glife expects to offer more services to its clients, thanks to its partnership with Novitee.
Glife’s co-founder and CEO Justin Chou said in a press release that the food supply chain between farmers and F&B merchants in Asia is fragmented, while there is a lack of alignment between supply and demand.
“This Series A funds will allow us to improve our tech-enabled supply chain distribution model and work closely with Novitee to create an efficient and effective solution for the ecosystem. It will enable us to move one step closer to feeding the entire Southeast Asia region sustainably,” Chou said.
Asia is expected to become the biggest food waste generator in the world by 2030, contributing over 500 million tons of waste a year. This is the result of fragmentation within the agricultural industry, ineffective distribution models, and lack of investment in greener models, according to a report by PwC, Rabobank, and Temasek.
Glife is not the only firm digitizing the food supply chain in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based food surplus marketplace TreeDots recently landed USD 11 million in a Series A round co-led by Amasia and East Ventures, while other notable names include Indonesia’s Eden Farm, TaniHub, and Malaysia’s Food Market Hub.
