Jakarta's home-cooking delivery startup Black Garlic boxes up seed funding

The company received seed funding of an undisclosed amount from Convergence Ventures and Skystar Capital, reports Tech in Asia

If you enjoy cooking meals at home but don’t like battling traffic in Jakarta just to get to the supermarket, on-demand food delivery apps may be your thing. Naturally, you’ve got choices like Berry Kitchen, hyperlocal grocery service HappyFresh, and the on-demand courier option from Go-Jek. But there’s also another startup we’ve kept an eye on.

Late last week, Jakarta-based meal kit delivery service Black Garlic said that it received a seed funding round of an undisclosed amount from local venture capital firms Convergence Ventures and Skystar Capital. The money will be used to scale up the company’s operations in the Jakarta metro area, and to diversify Black Garlic’s offerings.

Co-founders Michael Saputra and Olivia Wongso are no strangers to Indonesia’s food and beverage industry. Michael, Black Garlic’s CEO, is also the co-founder of Jakarta’s Klik-Eat, an online food delivery firm that he sold to his Japanese investors in September 2014.

Black Garlic has a similar concept to Blue Apron in the US, a firm that aims to make home cooking accessible to everyone. But while Blue Apron focuses on high-quality ingredients and a nice cooking experience, Michael says Black Garlic is instead geared toward solving a problem for people in Indonesia’s urban areas. According to the team, Black Garlic’s service is designed to make the idea of home cooking a simple decision, rather than a daunting trip to the grocery store.

Michael adds that the service is great for families that have live-in maids who cook, as the instructions in each box can show them how to prepare each dish.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here