Indonesian online food ordering service Klik Eat raises funds from Japanese firm

Klik Eat has announced yesterday that it has received an investment from Yume no Machi, a JASDAQ-listed Japanese firm that operates online food ordering service demae-can.com, which lists more than 11,200 restaurants in Japan. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Following this investment, Rie Nakamura, president of Yume no Machi, and Masateru Kaneko, its Financial Accounting Manager, will join Klik Eat’s board of directors. The founders, Michael Saputra, Andrew Pangestan and Willy Haryanto, will continue to assume control of the site.

Launched in January 2012, Klik Eat enables customers to order food online, by phone, or using instant messaging services. So far, it has sent IDR 1.8B (USD 185K) to its 175 restaurant partners in the span of a year.

One of Klik Eat’s competitors is FoodPanda, a well-funded food ordering service by Rocket Internet that operates in 9 countries in Asia. Room Service Deliveries is also a major player: It operates in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and recently merged with Dealguru to consolidate its services.

Japanese firms have been actively investing in Southeast Asia in 2012, and it looks like this trend is set to continue this year. GREE Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, CyberAgent Ventures, and Global Brain are just some of the companies that have made advancements into the region.

Klik-Eat gets food delivered online in Jakarta, competes head-on with FoodPanda

Online food delivery websites are sprouting in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia’s Klik-Eat.com being one of them. The website has more than 130 restaurants in the country’s capital of Jakarta.

Targeting office workers and apartment residents aged 20-35 years old, the app was developed with the hopes of improving food delivery online by offering more food choices and easing ordering jams in the process.

The website was founded by six individuals: Michael Alvin Saputra, who is responsible for day-to-day operations; Andrew, who deals with the finances; and Willy, who is their developer. Three other founding members act as advisers and angel investors: Angelo, who works in the SEA private equity industry, as well as Arya and Ardi, who have successfully launched a telecommunications tower company previously. Read more

10 finalists for Echelon 2012 pitch competition announced

The 10 finalists for Echelon 2012, a major technology startup conference in Singapore, has been announced. They will be pitching on stage at the event to vie for the title of Most Promising Startup.

The startups come from the following countries: Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand. At this moment, they are fine-tuning their actual day pitches with the e27 team, who are the organizers of the event.

Here’s a list of the finalists (descriptions by e27): Read more