Waresix raises seed funding from East Ventures

By Digital News Asia February 21, 2018

Dynamic warehousing strategy allows customers to adapt to variable demand
Customers only pay per-unit costs for the services they use

Waresix raises seed funding from East Ventures

WARESIX, an on-demand warehousing company that aims to connect businesses to professional warehouse operators, announced on Feb 20 that it has secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures.

The investment will be used to accelerate Waresix’s mission to develop their warehouse network, infrastructure and cloud-based platform.

In Indonesia, the warehouse industry accounts for 15% of the total logistics market and last year, it was estimated to be worth US$27 billion (RM105 billion).

Today, with the rapid growth of e-commerce, the need for on-demand flexible warehousing is expected to grow rapidly as sellers and manufacturers open to store goods close to major population centres so orders can be delivered faster.

Waresix CEO Andree (pic) says, “Distribution and logistics have always been a challenge in Indonesia due to its archipelago structure. Waresix provides a solution for a dynamic warehousing strategy that allows our customers (retailers, distributor sand manufacturers) to quickly adapt to variable demand.

“Our dynamic warehousing offers flexibility as customers only pay per-unit costs for the services they use, thus avoiding extra capital expenses.”

The three Waresix founders - Andree, Edwin, and Filbert Hansel - first met at UC Berkeley as engineering students.

Coming from different backgrounds and majoring in varying specialties (business processes, logistic-supply chain, and computer science), they saw a huge problem to tackle in logistics.

Andree explained, “The idea to build Waresix first came from our own difficulties of having to distribute consumer products across 40 distribution points around Indonesia. As an SME, it was almost impossible to quickly build the infrastructure that could handle the project.

“It required a combination of outsourced logistics and in-house models that required a lot of capital. Problems in the operations such as consolidating inventory in multiple places, managing documentation, and billing across different parties slowed the company down when we should have been focusing on our core business.

“Waresix solves this problem with its Warehouse Management Solution platform where users (SMEs) are able to manage their warehouse distribution, inventory, customer orders, and billing cycles within one app.

“Our technology utilises an algorithm to help users find the best warehouse to store their products. The cloud-based software provides access for our clients to manage their reservations, access to the operational visibility such as inventory management and shipment, as well as managing contracts and billing across different warehouses,” adds Waresix CTO Filbert.

According to Waresix CFO Edwin, the business currently covers major cities in Indonesia including Greater Jakarta, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Lampung, Pekanbaru, Makassar and Balikpapan.

“We are here to help our customers who are experiencing problems with inventory overflow, product distribution, temporary storage and cross-docking solutions,” said Edwin.

East Ventures managing partner Willson Cuaca says, “Waresix combines the sharing economy and a SaaS solution to serve the modern logistics industry. They help businesses to engage with warehouse providers efficiently and help warehouse or property owners to maximise asset usage. This solution will only work in a market that has significant digital commerce players, and we hope Waresix can capitalise the Indonesian market quickly.”