F&B procurement startup raises seed capital from Japanese investor

Japanese Taku Tanaka, founder of Kamereo, said the newly acquired money would be used to upgrade the platform’s service offerings and strengthen the customer care team.

"We use technology to solve the buying and sourcing problem, and restaurants can focus on their core business to bring the best culinary experience to customers. In future we will expand our services to other sectors and regions."

From his experience, Tanaka, who moved to Vietnam in 2015 as CEO of a pizza chain, found that procurement operations were mainly labor-intensive and inefficient.

"We believe that technology can solve this problem, providing solutions to reduce the cost of personnel in a transparent and accurate manner," he said.

The Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered business-to-business procurement platform, established last June, now has more than 4,000 product categories, 120 partner suppliers and 200 registered restaurants.

While Kamereo will focus its resources on Vietnam for now, it is planning a series A round of funding involving a few million U.S. dollars in late 2019 or 2020 to expand in Southeast Asia.

The funding came amid a technology startup boom in Vietnam’s F&B market where delivery platforms such as GoViet and Grab battle for market share down the supply chain.

A report published last October by Vietnam Research said Vietnamese spend more than a third of their income on food and beverages ahead of education and utilities.

Global research firm Nielsen also considered F&B one of the most attractive industries, with the potential to become a major player in the Vietnamese economy, citing findings from one of its studies which found food and beverages were two of the 10 most bought products online in 2017.