Social commerce startup KitaBeli on Tuesday announced that it has obtained an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by East Ventures. AC Ventures also joined the round with participation from angel investors.
KitaBeli lets users buy daily essentials and household items in groups. Users can invite other people to form groups in order to receive discounts from the platform.
“Indonesian consumers are extremely social. They love to share information about deals, discounts, and purchases with their friends and family. We saw that other platforms have not been able to tap into this behavior,” said Prateek Chaturvedi, the firm’s co-founder. “KitaBeli gives users a convenient way of sharing purchases with their friends and inviting them to buy together and save money.”
KitaBeli’s service is currently limited to Jakarta and its satellite cities. However, co-founder Ivana Tjandra added the company is looking to expand into more areas, especially tier-2 to tier-4 cities.
The company says it operates differently from other social commerce platforms in Indonesia such as Woobiz, RateS, and Super, which host resellers on their apps. KitaBeli, on the other hand, uses a direct-to-consumer approach, which the company hopes will lead to a more profitable business model than its competitors.
KitaBeli was founded by in March 2020. The team is split between India and Indonesia, with the technology team based out of Bangalore and the operations and marketing teams in Jakarta.