Grocery delivery startup honestbee gets US$15m funding

Singapore

HONESTBEE, a homegrown on-demand grocery delivery startup, has bagged US$15 million in Series A funding led by Silicon Valley-based tech investment firm Formation 8.

Co-founder Isaac Tay told BT on Tuesday: "(With the money), we intend to expand across Asia. We recently launched in Hong Kong and will be extending our services to Taiwan and other parts of Asia."

Launched here in August, honestbee offers the delivery of over 15,000 products from supermarkets such as NTUC FairPrice and Sheng Siong as well as specialty stores such as Pet Lovers Center, Gastronomia Da Paolo, Mmmm!, The Butcher's Dog, Crystal Wines, GNC and Four Seasons Organic. The company holds no inventory.

In Hong Kong, honestbee's partner retailers - for a start - are Anything But Salads, Liquor & Liqueur, Gateway and Great Food Hall. Said Mr Tay: "Hong Kongers are known for being early adopters of beneficial new technology. With the work culture in Hong Kong, most people are time-starved. We aim to make grocery shopping a quick and enjoyable task."

An hour is all it takes, according to the startup. Its trained concierge shoppers will handpick every item from the customers' online carts and deliver them to their doorsteps, as if the customers are "shopping at the stores for themselves", said Mr Tay.

He added that as a "social impact business" honestbee aims to create more job opportunities for its shoppers and deliverymen. A shopper, for instance, earns up to S$14 per hour; one of its top shoppers once made S$4,500 in a month, he said.

Other investors in honestbee's Series A funding round include Pejman Mar Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm; Gideon Yu, former chief financial officer of Facebook and YouTube; Owen Van Natta, former chief operating officer of Facebook; and Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube.

Competition has become keener in the online grocery shopping space. Singapore-based online grocer RedMart in August snagged some US$27 million in Series C funding from investors including Garena and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saveri, while Jakarta's HappyFresh in September raised US$12 million in Series A from Sinar Mas Digital Ventures and Temasek's Vertex Venture Holdings.

Having joined the fray too are Cold Storage Online, and FairPrice Online, which recently reported a 20 per cent year-on-year rise in customers since its 2002 launch.