2022 April 6 – Jakarta, Indonesia – Pioneering textile tech platform Wifkain raises a seed round led by Insignia Ventures Partners as it builds Indonesia’s first tech-enabled textile trading platform. Prominent angels including Atome’s Wawan Salum participated in this round. Funding will go towards expanding the suite of services provided to SMEs and fashion brands on their platform, onboarding more merchants, and building out their team.

Unlocking massive potential in Indonesia’s textile and manufacturing hub

Wifkain was founded in 2020 by former banker and fashion entrepreneur Sara Sofyan (CEO), serial D2C brand entrepreneur Chindera Soewandy (COO), and Bukalapak alum and seasoned senior product manager Rudy Setyo Hartono (CTO). They came together to start Wifkain recognizing from their past experiences both the persisting problems that can be solved and massive opportunity that can be unlocked by enabling digitalization in Indonesia’s textile industry.

Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest textile and manufacturing hubs, worth 40% of the US$55B global fashion industry according to a 2018 Euromonitor report and expected to grow 5% CAGR from 2021 in this 2022 report, but the country’s textile procurement process has long been very long-tail and opaque. Manufacturers have no systemized connection to buyers, limiting their exposure to reach sales potential, with unfulfillment rates ranging from 30 to 50% and order processing taking several days. This in turn limits the options for a lot of fashion businesses and brands and forces them to turn to multiple layers of middlemen. These traders traditionally sell in offline channels with a very limited product selection, at expensive prices, without product guarantees, and through a disintegrated ordering system.

Wifkain CEO Sara Sofyan emphasizes the company’s mission, “Our goal from day one with starting Wifkain has been to enable connectivity, transparency and efficiency for Indonesia’s textile industry. The platform we’re building connects direct buyers and sellers, disintermediating the long chain of middle-men and making the transaction journey cheaper, faster and less risky. There’s a lot of untapped growth that can be unlocked in this industry, which in its current state is already the biggest globally, by digitizing the value chain especially for the long-tail small to medium merchants. We’re building a digital breakthrough for this large, traditional industry that has been a long time coming and we’re excited to be leading the way in creating a more efficient industry and empowering more fashion brands and businesses.”

Growing this Digital Breakthrough for Indonesia’s Textile Industry

Since launching their platform in 2020, Wifkain has seen 11x year-on-year GMV growth with over 150 merchants (textile sellers both factories and sellers) across Java Island. Their platform currently provides customers with a 1-day SLA sourcing process, cut down from the traditional 3 weeks, cost-efficiency on their purchases up to 50%, pay-later options with tenor up to 4 months, and hassle-free logistics services.

This is just the beginning for Wifkain, however, and the company aims to ultimately build a full-stack software platform that caters to all the needs of Indonesia’s textile supply chain. With this funding round, they look to include order management and inventory management systems on their platform to enable order confirmations within hours, lower unfulfillment rate of orders to less than 5%, increase transparency on production tracking, and provide valuable demand analysis and predictions for suppliers.

Join Wifkain’s team as they revolutionize Indonesia’s fashion industry

For Insignia Ventures Partners, their seed investment into Wifkain reflects an ongoing trend of the rise of industry-focused platforms seeking to digitialize entire value chains. As founding managing partner Yinglan Tan puts it, “Fashion is becoming increasingly available and accessible online for a greater population in Southeast Asia through ecommerce marketplaces and social media platforms, but the upstream value chain in countries like Indonesia remain largely disconnected and fragmented. Sara and her team at Wifkain are well-positioned with their roots in the local industry to push the envelope and redefine the textile value chain in Indonesia. They have already made significant initial progress since launching their platforms and we’re excited that we are their early partners in this journey.”

CEO Sara Sofyan was a Venture Fellow part of the inaugural cohort of Insignia Ventures Academy, Asia’s first experiential venture capital accelerator, where over the 12 week program she met Insignia Ventures and connected with fellow participants who became valuable advisors.

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Press Kit
Please find a press kit with all materials relating to this announcement here.

Media Contact
Sara Sofyan
CEO & Co-Founder, Wifkain
sara@wifworld.com

Paulo Joquino
Senior Content Strategist, Insignia Ventures Partners
paulo@insignia.vc

About Wifkain

Wifkain is the supply chain platform for all fashion brands in Indonesia. By focusing on the center of the industry’s problem, we bring convenience for businesses to source fabrics from direct suppliers both online and offline. With the launch of our website in March 2020, our customers will have the ease to view and order fabrics online. Samples can be ordered effortlessly for direct touch & feel within a 24-hour delivery. Additionally, we are currently open and ready for free consultation offline for direct viewing with over a thousand varieties of SKUs. Shopping fabric has never been so easy and convenient for Indonesian businesses.

About Insignia Ventures Partners

Insignia Ventures Partners is an early-stage technology venture capital firm partnering with unstoppable founders to build great companies in Southeast Asia. Since 2017, we have invested in 70+ emerging technology companies across industries and geographies in the region, including unicorns Carro, Ajaib, GoTo, and Appier, and category leaders including Payfazz, Shipper, tonik, and Flip. We partner early with founders and support them from seed through growth stage as their companies create meaningful impact for millions of people in Southeast Asia and beyond. With our team of 30+ investment and operating professionals who bring together decades of experience and proprietary networks, we equip our founders with the tools they need for growth. Learn more on our website and Insignia Business Review. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.