SINGAPORE-BASED Glife Technologies closed a S$11 million Series A round led by Temasek unit Heliconia Capital, it said in a press statement on Tuesday (Nov 16).

Other investors in for the business-to-business food and agritech startup include Hibiscus Fund, a venture capital fund managed by Malaysia's RHL Ventures and South Korea's KB Investment. Including a previous seed funding round of S$3 million by Global Founders Capital, this brings Glife's total funding to S$14 million.

"The digitalisation trend, as well as agrifood supply chain and labour challenges, will continue to put innovative companies like Glife in a unique position to serve its customers," said Derek Lau, chief executive officer of Heliconia Capital.

Glife provides a platform for food and beverage merchants to view the logistics flow of their ingredients, offering a marketplace for farmers and merchants to connect. The company claims to serve over 1000 farmers and over 900 merchants across South-east Asia.

The funding will primarily be used for a strategic investment into Novitee, which provides solutions such as point of sales, QR ordering, payments and inventory among others. Novitee clams to serve over 1000 customers in South-east Asia and China.

This move aims to plug Novitee's expertise into Glife's network to mine data to drive insights and enhance its offerings for Glife's customers.

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There are plans to launch in Malaysia and Indonesia in Q1 2022, along with further investments into artificial intelligence and data analytics for restaurant management. Tech hires are also on the horizon as the company looks to develop more solutions for its pool of farmers and merchants.

"The 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 - enabling us to move one step closer to feeding the entire South-east Asia region sustainably," said Justin Chou, co-founder and chief executive officer of Glife.

Read more:

• Glife raises S$1.6m of seed capital to take farm food direct to forks