Food Market Hub, a Malaysia-based procurement and inventory management platform for the food and beverage industry, announced on Wednesday that it raised USD 4 million from Go-Ventures and US-based investment firm SIG. The company plans to use the fresh capital to consolidate its market position in Malaysia, before expanding into Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. “These are the largest markets in Southeast Asia that share many similar dynamics to the Malaysian market,” co-founder Shayna Teh told KrASIA.
“A single restaurant may need to process some 200 purchase orders every month,” said Anthony See, Food Market Hub’s co-founder. “When a restaurant grows or becomes a franchise using a central kitchen, complexity increases exponentially.”
Founded in 2017 by See and Teh, the company offers a cloud-based platform that automates the purchasing and inventory-tracking process. It connects restaurants and their suppliers who can place orders through the system. Technology helps predict purchasing needs which can result in a more effective inventory control. “The F&B sector typically does not use digitized procurement and inventory management solutions, resulting in inefficiency and significant added costs, both in terms of food wastage and labor required to do these things manually,” said Teh.
With a customer base of over 2,000 F&B outlets and an annual purchase order volume of USD 200 million, the firm currently operates in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and counts Din Tai Fung, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Paul Lafayet among its customers. Food Market Hub says that, despite COVID-19, customers continue to pay and input over 90% of their orders. Teh said the crisis enables customers to understand the importance of controlling ingredient costs. “Outlets look to optimize their cost structures amid a challenging environment,” she added.
The news comes 18 months after the firm bagged USD 450,000 of seed funding from 500 Startups in May last year.
