☕ Your Morning Cup of Kopi
Chatting with Rahmat Budiardjo (SVP @ Kopi Kenangan). Plus: Amazon reshuffles, Big Tech earnings rise, more SPACs + even more regulations
Wrapped Up Newsletter #12
Today’s Menu
Quick Bits: Jeff Bezos departs + Kuaishou enters
Done Deals: AI, automation + alcohol
Deep Dive: A conversation with Rahmat Budiardjo, SVP @ Kopi Kenangan
What Else We're Following: 5 articles, from the growth of European tech to crypto governance
Jobs - Internships/Full-Time: 14 full-time jobs and internship postings
Quick Bits 🌎
Recap in the West: Bye Jeff
Jeff Bezos steps down. Earnings jump with Amazon, Alphabet, PayPal, Snap and Pinterest. Google shuts down internal game studio while Google Cloud increases its losses. Ford and Google partner up. Spotify might charge you for its podcasts. Viva is Microsoft's take on the new intranet. Auto1 goes public with a bang. Edtech Nerdy, data automotive startup Otonomo, rocket startup Astra and genetics testing company 23andMe are latest to get SPAC'd. Knotel loses and WeWork wins. Robinhood CEO and Elon Musk had a chat on Clubhouse. Venmo goes neobank. Uber gets fizzy with Drizly. Box signs a deal with SignRequest. HubSpot hustles to build business content. AppLovin acquires Adjust to measure app performance.
Recap in the East: A Tale of Two Short-Form Video Apps
Kuaishou's market debut doesn't disappoint. Pray for Myanmar (and its digital economy). Ant becomes a bank. Entire gig economy is on China's watchlist. Alibaba sees blue skies with cloud. Didi sees IPO in the menu. IBM packs up. Expect Tesla's in Singapore soon. Chinese TikTok Douyin sues Big Tech. Gaming company Razer plugs in jobs to SEA. India government bets big on digital payments. Google co-founder settles down in the city state. Tencent Music tunes in for an IPO. India reins in on Bitcoin and Twitter.
Done Deals ✍🏼
Funding Rounds
Romanian-founded, New York-based robotic process automation platform UiPath raises $750m (Series F) at $35bn valuation
US data-and-AI company Databricks snags $1bn (Series G) at a $28bn valuation
San Francisco-based wine app Vivino raises $155m (Series D)
Seattle-based e-bike startup Rad Power Bikes raises $150m
US proptech Divvy Homes secures $110m (Series C)
US grocery delivery startup Good Eggs picks up $100m (Series D)
Chinese social gaming startup Guangzhou Quwan Network Technology closes $100m (Series B)
Indian esports & gaming platform Mobile Premier League raises $95m (Series D)
US connectivity company Omnispace gets $60m to fuse satellites and 5G
US proptech Valon Mortgage raises $50m (Series A)
San Francisco-based machine learning company Weights & Biases raises $45m (Series B)
Spanish EV charging startup Wallbox bags $40m (Series B)
Saudi Arabia restaurant management software FOODICS raises $20m (Series B)
US HR platform Oyster picks up $20m (Series A)
Brazilian chat platform Rocket.Chat gets $19m (Series A)
Vietnamese language learning app ELSA bags $15m for global expansion
Spanish ERP-for-small-businesses startup Holded raises $15m (Series B)
US sales efficiency toolkit Scratchpad raises $13m (Series A)
Mexican consumer trading platform Flink attracts $12m (Series A)
New Funds
Kindred Ventures closed its 2nd fund with $100m in capital
Frontline Ventures raises new $83.8m seed fund for European B2B startups
Atomico launches its third angel programme
Deep Dive 🤿
(2 min read)
Translation: Kopi Kenangan = "coffee memories"
We speak with Rahmat Budiardjo, Senior Vice President at Kopi Kenangan, the fastest growing tech-enabled grab and go coffee chain in Southeast Asia. Prior to Kopi Kenangan, Rahmat worked in private equity as an investment director at Archipelago Capital Partners, focusing in the Southeast Asia region, and consulting at McKinsey & Company. Rahmat is also an INSEAD MBA alumnus, Class of 2014.
Rahmat is responsible for managing primary business functions including corporate development, corporate finance and strategy & operations. He shares his two cents on his role at Kopi Kenangan, the regional market for coffee and his takeaways from growing a rapidly-growing consumer brand in Indonesia.
On joining Kopi Kenangan:
“One of my main considerations for joining Kopi Kenangan lied in their financials. They demonstrated a proven business model and the fundamentals behind their P&L metrics were strong. From a core economics point-of-view, their strategic vision to scale in and beyond Indonesia is doable.”
On product development:
“Although our name translates to “coffee”, Kopi Kenangan was created to be your atypical coffee brand. Our Hero-Product is Kopi Kenangan Mantan, a mix of coffee, high-quality milk and palm sugar. While we sell traditional coffee variants, the hero-product was designed to be suitable for Indonesians, who have a sweeter palate. Since the inception, we have been continuously re-inventing our products, with the taste of Indonesians customers’ palate in mind.”
On post-pandemic trends in FCMG:
“Those who couldn't adapt to the new norm in Indonesia have struggled, with some having to close shops. In my opinion, there are three options to maintain business viability to survive the pandemic: 1) be as close as possible to your customers, 2) leveraging the existence of third-party platform (i.e. GoFood & GrabFood) who can deliver your products to your customers, and 3) strengthening your tech (i.e. apps) to allow customers to order online and explore different product offerings, and have the products delivered at their convenience.”
On maintaining burn rate:
“Understand your cash flows. As founders and operators, you need to understand your operating cash flow, investing cash flow and total cash-burn. We don't know how long the pandemic will last and regardless of the implications we may face now or next year, we want to have enough cash runway to sustain ourselves.”
On Kopi Kenangan’s next steps:
“We are aiming to strengthen our dominance in Indonesia, be it through our store expansions and layering new products on top of our current for our customers. We have been working with local farmers and distributors for our coffee bean. From where we stand, we want to continuously build strong relationship with suppliers on the ground to deliver best raw material for our customers.”
You can check out the full interview here (6-min read).
What Else We're Following 👀
What (and how) a16z thinks about crypto governance
"Talent naturally looks for where the opportunities are greatest. Right now, the European tech scene is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world.” Octopus Ventures’ Emma Davies weighs in on the European tech scene
"Quitting institutions that are constantly in the negative spotlight make sense to critics - why would anyone stick around?" A look into why tech employees stay
Podcast: Mark Cuban's two cents on bubbles, sports and vaccines
Some quick hacks on how to: design your work life, take notes and write a business plan
Jobs - Internships/Full-Time 👩🏽💼
We will pilot a Notion page dedicated to aggregating job opportunities (internships & full-time). You can find this week’s job postings here.
Last Week’s Issue
January 31: Live & E-Learn
Feedback
Hey there! We are Jeff, Dom and Vas, coming to you live from INSEAD. Thanks for reading Wrapped Up. We'd love to get your feedback - feel free to email us at jeffrey.dong@insead.edu! It will help us to improve the newsletter and deliver the content you want right into your inbox. Thanks!