MALAYSIA – Food Market Hub (FMH), a Malaysia-based food and beverages (F&B) procurement and inventory management startup has announced it has secured US$4 million in Series A round of funding.
FMH which raised the funds in a round co-led by Go-Ventures and US-based investment firm SIG plans to use the fresh capital to increase its market share in Malaysia.
The company also has plans to later expand into markets including Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Founded in 2017 by Anthony See and Shayna Teh, the company offers a cloud-based platform that automates the purchasing and inventory-tracking process using artificial intelligence.
It connects restaurants and their suppliers who can place orders through the system.
Technology helps predict purchasing needs which can result in a more effective inventory control.
Co-founder Anthony See noted that single restaurant may need to process some 200 purchase orders every month.
When done manually, the process was tedious as well as prone to human error, says Anthony See who noted that the complexity of the work increased potentially when restaurants grew or becomes a franchise using a central kitchen.
The FMH’cloud-based platform helps F&B operators manage and track procurement inventory.
This solution automates the purchasing and inventory-tracking process, by connecting F&B outlets with their central kitchen and suppliers.
The startup further notes that it uses Big Data and AI to improve restaurant procurement and reduced.
AI also helps analyse past data and recommend usage of raw ingredients, resulting in better inventory control.
In a nutshell, Food Market Hub’s system simplifies procurement processes saving time and increasing efficiency of the process.
“Technology has the ability to revolutionise the F&B sector, which has been badly hit by the pandemic,” said Nigel Quah, Investment Professional at Go-Ventures.
“The FMH team has the deep industry expertise and has demonstrated that the F&B industry can benefit greatly from AI, analytical technology and automation.”
Currently FMH supports over 2,000 F&B outlets in Malyaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan and places close to US$200 million in purchase orders through the system annually.
According to a report by Deal Street Asia, the startup’s systems is currently used by some of the leading F&B restaurants in its markets which include Din Tai Fung, fast food chain KFC, and Chinese restaurant Putien.
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