Inside Jeff Bezos’ first investment in Indonesian e-commerce

Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made his initial investment in a Southeast Asian e-commerce commence-up last month.

But it’s in not one of the region’s billion-greenback unicorns. It can be in a mother-and-pop store begin-up that’s been all over for fewer than two years.

And its founders? Some of Bezos’ former employees.

“It was incredibly fortunate and a massive lover boy minute for me,” Ula CEO Nipun Mehra, 40, advised CNBC Make It.

Company encouraged by Bezos

Indonesian e-commerce begin-up Ula is a wholesale marketplace aiming to modernize the country’s millions of mother-and-pop kiosks, or warungs, by supplying inventory and shipping companies as well as financing.

Founded in January 2020 by CEO Mehra, the enterprise has thrived underneath a pandemic-induced change to electronic, so far raising over $117 million in funding from major names like Tencent and Lightspeed Undertaking Partners.

One amongst them is Bezos, whose family place of work Bezos Expeditions invested an undisclosed sum soon after one particular of the start-up’s early backers explained to him about Ula.

The standard way of performing e-commerce doesn’t get the job done … So you have to come across other techniques of undertaking it.

Nipun Mehra

co-founder and CEO, Ula

Nevertheless Mehra has hardly ever fulfilled the billionaire founder, he worked beneath him as a software engineer at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters right before becoming a member of e-commerce large Flipkart in his indigenous India.

Like Bezos, Mehra yearned to be an entrepreneur. But it was not until a long time later, although working as an trader at Sequoia India, that he saw an chance to adapt the traditional e-commerce model for a new market: small food kiosks in Indonesia. 

Nipun Mehra, co-founder and CEO of Indonesian e-commerce marketplace Ula.

Ula

“The common Amazon, Flipkart — or here in Southeast Asia we have Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia and so on — has been additional on the non-foodstuff aspect. Foodstuff is a pretty various way of managing factors,” said Mehra.

“Ordinarily in emerging economies, their income profile is this sort of that they have to buy usually and in smaller baskets. The moment you get into that dynamic, the conventional way of undertaking e-commerce isn’t going to work. You cannot provide a three-, four-, five-greenback basket to somebody’s dwelling and do it profitably … so you have to come across other techniques of executing it.”

Adapting e-commerce for Indonesia

Indonesia is household to hundreds of thousands of avenue stalls, identified as warungs, marketing every day essentials such as food stuff and residence merchandise.

Ula

They are an integral section of society, especially in the lesser towns and provinces outside the capital Jakarta, accounting for practically a few-quarters (72%) of the country’s $47 billion consumer products gross sales.

Nonetheless numerous even now depend on classic means of replenishing their supplies by shuttering their retailers when they visit wholesalers to inventory up wares. 

They are very confined by the physical footprint that they can obtain.

Abheek Anand

managing director, Sequoia India

“They are essentially run by one or two persons, who act like customers. They have the business they need to procure things for on their own to market,” Abheek Anand, a taking care of director at Sequoia India, one of Ula’s investors, advised CNBC Make It.

“For them to tap into offline provide chains is basically very inefficient. They have to go to the regional current market, expend several hours figuring out what to obtain, wherever to get it from. By and big, they are quite constrained by the bodily footprint that they can obtain,” he extra.

Drawing on Amazon skills

Mehra wanted to simplify that course of action by creating a organization-to-small business platform that would empower stallholders to order stock at aggressive rates and have it delivered to their store for a tiny payment. 

So, he named on his contacts in the e-commerce house to aid him comprehend the eyesight. 

Ula co-founders Riky Tenggara, Derry Sakti and Alan Wong.

Ula

His former colleague from Amazon, Alan Wong, Riky Tenggara from Lazada, and Procter & Gamble executive Derry Sakti rounded out the founding workforce.

“We’ve learned all this things in Amazon, we’ve realized all this things at business enterprise faculty. How do we convey some of that into this tiny smartphone and support them each make additional revenue as well as preserve extra income?,” mentioned Mehra.

Powering up in the pandemic

The enterprise obtained off to a steady start. But inside of months of launching in January 2020, the pandemic hit, making desire for providers like Ula far more urgent. 

Lockdowns made it more challenging for stallholders to resource goods from wholesalers, even as shopper demand for each day essentials grew. That induced quite a few mom-and-pop retailers to pile onto the platform. 

The need in the industry just totally switched. In lockdown, your 1st priority is to get your food stuff, is to get items that you consume.

Nipun Mehra

co-founder and CEO, Ula

Ula onboarded tens of hundreds of merchants onto its platform all through the top of the pandemic.

Ula

“The most interesting addition to the enterprise is Jeff Bezos, who’s invested, which is definitely wonderful validation for the enterprise. But there are a selection of other seriously intelligent people today who have joined us along the way,” explained Sequoia India’s Anand.

An formidable development agenda

In Oct 2021, Ula shut its Series B round, raising $87 million. Mehra said the cash will go in direction of growing its existing market giving, as very well as launching a so-referred to as get now, pay afterwards provider to provide stallholders with small financial loans.

In just the upcoming 18 months, the CEO hopes to quadruple the range of merchants Ula operates with from 70,000 right now to 300,000. He also hopes to help merchants expand into new categories such as clothing and technologies, with the greatest goal of doubling their money. 

That is what will lead to a new form of retail. Not a thing which we have noticed in the U.S. … It will be an Indonesia-specific, exclusive alternative.

Nipun Mehra

co-founder and CEO, Ula