Farm produce portal Glife Technologies has raised S$11 million ($8.13 million) in Series A funding, it announced today.
The round was led by Heliconia Capital, an affiliate of Singaporean sovereign investor Temasek, with participation from the Hibiscus Fund – an investment vehicle managed by Malaysia’s RHL Ventures and South Korea’s KB Investment under the Malaysian government’s Dana Penjana Nasional program.
The involvement of these investors points to Glife’s expansion plans. The Singapore-based startup — which sells produce direct from local farmers to food and beverage merchants — expects to launch into neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia during Q1 2022.
In addition to its farm produce marketplace, Glife — which launched in 2017 — provides software solutions that allow its restaurant, cafe, and hotel customers to keep track of logistics and inventory. The company will deploy some of the Series A funds to augment its tech capabilities, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and data analytics.
Part of this plan will see Glife make an investment into Novitee, a Singapore-based enterprise software platform for the food and beverage industries.
Novitee’s tech offerings run the gamut from enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management through to purchasing, inventory management, point-of-sales, and cloud kitchen management.
Glife said the strategic investment will combine Novitee’s “technological expertise within the F&B industry with Glife’s strong network of farmers and merchants,” taking it one step closer to becoming a “data-driven […] end-to-end solutions provider that connects stakeholders across the food value chain,” it said in a statement.
“We recognise [there is] a long and fragmented supply chain between farmers and merchants and a lack of visibility and alignment between supply and demand,” said Glife co-founder and CEO Justin Chou.
“The Series A funds will allow us to improve our tech enabled supply chain distribution model and work closely with Novitee to create an efficient and effective solution for the ecosystem, enabling us to move one step closer to feeding the entire Southeast Asia region sustainably.”
Glife claims it serves over 1,000 farmers and 900 F&B merchants throughout the region. Its earlier investors include Global Founders Capital and 500 Startups.
Chou is also co-founder and executive director at plant-based protein startup Growthwell Foods. It closed its Series A round in September, raising $22 million from investors including Creadev, GGV Capital, DSG Consumer Partners, Iris Fund, and Temasek.
Chou also founded vegetarian restaurant chain Greendot in 2011. His family has a long history in plant-based foods; his father established one of Singapore and Malaysia’s most recognized producers of mock meat products aimed at Buddhist consumers in the 1980s.
