Indonesian coffee startup Kopi Kenangan bags USD 20 million (IDR 282 billion) funding from Sequoia India. The new investment brings the company’s total funding to USD 28 million. The company had raised a USD 8 million seed funding round led by Alpha JWC in October 2018.
Founded in 2017 by Edward Tirtanata and James Prananto, the startup aims to offer high-quality coffee at affordable prices while introducing a digitally enhanced consumer experience. Kopi Kenangan lets you pre-order through an app and it makes deliveries, which appeals to the country’s young and tech-savvy consumers. It’s comparable to China’s Luckin Coffee.
In an official statement, the company said it will use the fresh funding to accelerate growth by opening 150 outlets by the end of this year and expanding to 1.000 stores throughout Indonesia by 2021. From 16 stores and 175.000 cups per month in October 2018, Kopi Kenangan has been showing its promising growth in the past nine months. Today, it has 80 stores in eight cities and serves one million cups of coffee each month.
Kopi Kenangan is now in talks to expand its operations across Southeast Asia.
Its best-selling product called “Es Kopi Kenangan Mantan” is made from locally-sourced coffee, fresh milk, and organic palm sugar. Kopi Kenangan also added several popular Asian drinks to its menu, including Thai Tea, bubble tea, and Malay’s pulled tea (Teh Tarik)
Kopi Kenangan launched its own app in April 2019 and is one of the pioneers of a new retail model in Indonesia that combines the convenience of online shopping and offline experience,
The app allows customers to order their coffee and pick it up at their preferred outlets, avoiding a long queue and wait time. For its deliveries, Kopi Kenangan collaborates with the country’s biggest food delivery platforms Go-Food and GrabFood. These two combined generate about 30% of the Kopi Kenangan’s orders.
In order to improve customer experience, Kopi Kenangan app is now focusing on personalization. The vision is for the app to become something like a ‘personal barista’ who knows regular customers’ coffee preference. The company claimed that its small retail footprint cuts costs-per-cup by 10% to 15%. It plans to deploy more technology to manage inventory and reduce wastage, which it says will help to cut costs even more.