Honestbee, the net grocery supply service in Asia, is sort of out of cash and attempting to dump its enterprise.
The firm has held early conversations with quite a few suitors in Asia, together with ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek, over the potential acquisition of half, or all, of its enterprise, based on two trade sources with information of the talks.
Founded in 2015, Honestbee works with supermarkets and retailers to ship items to clients utilizing its retailer pickers, supply fleet and cellular apps. The firm relies in Singapore and operates in eight markets throughout Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan. In some markets it has expanded to meals deliveries and, in Singapore, it operates an Alibaba-style on-line/offline retailer referred to as Habitat.
The firm makes its cash by taking a lower of transactions from shopper transactions, whereas it additionally monetizes supply providers individually.
Despite wanting spectacular from the surface, the corporate is presently in disaster mode resulting from a money crunch — there’s loads taking place proper now.
From speaking to a number of former and present workers, TechCrunch has come to be taught that Honestbee is shedding staff, it has a variety of suppliers who’re owed cash, it has “paused” its enterprise within the Philippines, it has closed R&D facilities in Vietnam and India, it isn’t going to make payroll in some markets and a variety of executives have give up the agency in current months.
Honestbee’s Habitat retailer features a cashless and automatic checkout expertise, amongst different online-offline providers
The difficulty is that the corporate is working out of cash due to a enterprise mannequin with tight margins that’s largely unproven in Asia Pacific.
One supply informed TechCrunch that the corporate doesn’t presently have the funds to pay its workers this month. A supply inside the corporate confirmed that Honestbee has informed Singapore-based workers that they gained’t be paid in time, nevertheless it isn’t clear about staff primarily based in different markets. Previously, workers have been paid inconsistently — with late wage funds despatched as financial institution transfers taking place twice this yr, based on the supply.
One cause that the Philippines enterprise has closed quickly — as Tech In Asia first reported this week — is that it’s out cash, and ready on Honestbee HQ in Singapore to supply additional capital. Already, the saga has confirmed to be an excessive amount of for Honestbee’s head of the Philippines — Crystal Gonzalez — who has give up the corporate, based on a supply inside Honestbee Philippines.
Gonzalez helped construct Viber’s enterprise within the Philippines, the place it’s a high messaging participant, and she or he was beforehand with Yahoo earlier than launching Honestbee. She is claimed to have grown pissed off at a scarcity of funds when the Philippines is the corporate’s best-performing market on paper.
Indeed, the state of affairs is so dire that suppliers and companions have been paid late, or left unpaid completely, within the Philippines and different markets. Honestbee takes cost for grocery deliveries, after which it’s supposed to supply the transaction, minus its lower, to its grocery store companions. But it has been gradual to pay distributors, with two in Singapore — FairPrice and U Stars — slicing ties with the startup.
Unclear financing
On the topic of financials, Honestbee appears to be like to be towards the tip of its runway.
The firm has all the time taken a reasonably secretive line on its financing. On launch, it introduced a $15 million Series A funding from Formation8, a Korean agency the place Honestbee CEO Joel Sng was a co-founder, nevertheless it has stated nothing extra since. Tech In Asia dug up filings final yr that present it has raised an extra $46 million from extra Korean buyers, however the startup declined to touch upon its financing when contacted by TechCrunch.
It appears to be like like that capital is sort of gone, at the least primarily based on what has been declared.
Internal numbers for Honestbee in December 2018, seen by TechCrunch, present that…
