May 24, 2022

 

Indonesian poultry tech firm raises $14 million in Series A funding

 

 

Indonesia's largest poultry tech startup, Pitik, announced on May 19 its $14 million Series A funding round led by Alpha JWC Ventures with participation from existing investors MDI Ventures and Wavemaker Partners.

 

With this funding, Pitik will expand its ecosystem to empower more chicken farmers in Indonesia.

 

Launched mid-2021 by serial entrepreneurs Arief Witjaksono and Rymax Joehana, Pitik aims to empower poultry farmers in Indonesia. The company said it is building the largest community of poultry farmers in the country and equipping them with end-to-end solutions on technology, financing and supply-chain.

 

Through its services, Pitik solves inefficiencies in farm production and streamlines the supply chain to create a fair ecosystem for farmers to grow and improve their welfare.

 

Such support is needed by local farms that have always been dealing with low efficiency, operational difficulties and late or even non-payment during harvest time. These problems resulted in a national mortality rate that is five to eight times higher than the global average.

 

"This funding round will enable us to reach out to more farmers, but also to drive further innovation and unlock additional efficiency gains for farmers," said Pitik co-founder and chief executive officer Witjaksono.

 

Pitik provides farmers with full-stack farm management technology to improve their productivity. Upon joining Pitik ecosystem, all farms are installed with internet-of-things systems and farmers are given access to Pitik smart farming application to facilitate real-time farm monitoring and instant issue identification through its farm algorithm.

 

Beyond technology, Pitik also leverages on its ecosystem to supply quality farm input to farmers, provide financing services and offtake the harvest with best prices and guaranteed terms of payment. With these services, Pitik said it has become the most trusted partner for farmers throughout their business cycles.

 

Pitik said its technology has proven to empower farm workers to independently achieve higher operations yield, with its farm partners achieving higher efficiency compared to average Indonesian farmers.

 

Based on the company's latest data, Pitik said its farmers managed to push down its mortality rate by half and improve the feed conversion ratio by 12% compared to the national average, eventually increasing their income.

 

In the past six months, Pitik has increased its farm network size by over 10 times through partnering with hundreds of farmers in 53 districts in West and Central Java. From this network of farmers, Pitik is currently selling over 16 million chickens annually – making Pitik the largest poultry startup in terms of business size in Indonesia, despite being operational less than one year.

 

Pitik targets to build presence in all areas of Java this year and expand to other Indonesia islands in 2023. The company will also expand its business to downstream services such as processing and distribution to end-users.

 

"We have unlocked the upstream business opportunities in poultry farming. Expanding to downstream means we can help farmers extract higher margins from the value chain," said co-founder and chief operating officer Joehana. "This is aligned with our mission to be farmers' partner in all points of the farming journey.

 

"This also means we can provide healthier and higher quality chicken for Indonesian consumers as products sold by Pitik are sourced fresh from our network of farmers with the most stringent standards of quality control and product traceability."

 

- TechNode Global