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How a Japanese Startup Gained 1000+ Customers in Southeast Asia?
SECAI MARCHE : From a Startup Lugging Corn to Leading in Southeast Asia’s Agricultural E-commerce
Asia Tomorrow Global & Jinny Kim
July 31, 2024
Welcome to Asia Tomorrow's 9th newsletter. Long time no see! After sending out our last newsletter in March, we are resuming the Asia Tomorrow newsletter before August.
During this time, Asia Tomorrow has introduced stories and insights from various Asian entrepreneurs. In today’s letter, we will spotlight "the story of a Japanese entrepreneur growing an agriculture/delivery startup in Southeast Asian markets such as Malaysia and Singapore".
SECAI MARCHE: How a Japanese Startup Gained Over 1000 Customers in Southeast Asia's Agriculture Sector
Founded in 2018 by Ami Sugiyama and Shusaku Hayakawa, SECAI MARCHE is a B2B online platform that connects farmers directly with restaurants in Southeast Asia. This innovative approach addresses the significant pain points in the supply chain for perishable goods, ensuring that fresh and high-quality products reach their destinations efficiently.
Why are these Japanese founders challenging the fresh produce e-commerce platform business in Malaysia and Singapore?
What exact problems do they aim to solve for suppliers and consumers through their platform?
Asia Tomorrow met with the two founders to learn about their experience of going from zero to one in the Southeast Asian market, the challenges they faced in acquiring their first customers as a B2B business, and the strategies and prospects of growing as a technology-based platform.
Q. Could you introduce SECAI MARCHE briefly?
(Ami Sugiyama) SECAI means ‘global’ in Japanese. MARCHE is ‘market’ in French but it’s also a commonly used term in Japan as well. So SECAI MARCHE means ‘global market’ where you can find fresh products from all over the world.
Having started in 2018, we become a B2B online platform in Southeast Asia to connect the farmers to the restaurants.
As we already see established a logistics network and fulfillment* solution for the perishable products in Japan, now we would like to bring this to the Southeast Asia market as well to contribute to the consumers(ex : the restaurants) as well as the farmers there.
*Fulfillment : The process of receiving, processing, and delivering orders to customers. This typically includes warehousing inventory, picking and packing products, and shipping orders.
Q. What’s your value proposition?
(Ami Sugiyama) We are actually focusing on the supply chain. So in 2018, we started to build the new value chain to connect the farmers and then the restaurant. We had some farmers in Japan and Malaysia to work with and then some consumers (ex : restaurants and retailers) a bit later. So now we are directly connecting the farmers and the restaurants which is our value proposition.
Q. What brought you to connect between Japan and Malaysia? It could have been a different country other than Malaysia.
(Ami Sugiyama) I think it will be better to tell you more about our behind story.
Before SECAI MARCHE, which is the supply chain business, we worked at a consulting company which helped to export agriculture products from Japan to Singapore.
Even before that, actually Shusaku Hayakawa used to be a farmer and technical engineer. So he understood the pain point of the farmers. I used to run my own cafe and restaurant in Malaysia so I knew the pain point as the restaurant runner. So we decided to open the supply chain business to solve both sides of the challenges.
Q. Do you have any specific and direct event or story that made you start SECAI MARCHE?
(Ami Sugiyama) During 2013~2014, we decided to start SECAI MARCHE in order to solve the challenges from the consumer point of view at first because I was already running my own restaurant.
At that time I didn’t know about the entire supply chain of Southeast Asia or so but I knew that I have big problems with finding the providers.
First of all, there was no aggregated information so I spent too much time on finding the right place I wanted which was painful to run the business.
Secondly, there was a quality problem. When my chef and I placed orders with the local supplies for fruits and so forth, the quality couldn’t be assured. Sometimes we couldn’t use 50% of the products.
In conclusion, we couldn’t find the ideal product if we relied on the traditional supply chain so we decided to found SECAI MARCHE.
(Shusaku Hayakawa) From the farmers' side, now thanks to the e-commerce players, the farmers can sell their products directly to the consumers (usually restaurants) in Japan. In addition, we have logistics service available so it’s easy to keep the quality of the product to sell to the consumers.
However in the Southeast Asia market, I found that e-commerce is relatively not reliable. For example, when we want to buy the perishable items, it doesn’t come, which means that even though there’s an icon, it doesn’t work. It’s because there is a lack of a logistics system in place to transport perishable goods quickly and efficiently. As a result, farmers can't conduct their business easily.
So for the farmers, I saw the big gap between the rise of e-commerce and the farmers who can’t get the benefit from it. As I hoped the farmers could use this opportunity, I also decided to start the business with Ami Sugiyama.
Q. How did you talk to the consumers and the farmers to work with you?
(Ami Sugiyama) The Japanese government is supporting the export of agricultural products at the moment. Therefore, of course we have our own network with the farmers but also, we have a partnership with the government as well as the stakeholders who are involved in the agricultural products export business.
In the Southeast Asia market such as Malaysia and Singapore, we went directly to visit the consumers and the farmers to find the markets. We had explained our business model and values to persuade them. We had done this as an initial strategy until we acquired the first 100+ customers.
Q. Could you tell us an interesting episode while you acquired these first 100+ customers?
(Ami Sugiyama) Yes. To find the local (Malaysian) farmers, since we are foreigners (Japanese), we didn’t know anything about it.
So we just went to the supermarkets and looked for the labels on the products to see the farmers’ names.
Also, we found them on Facebook and Instagram.
Or we visited them directly. Southeast Asia is more lively on the internet than we think, so some farmers have their brands online.
As the farmers' community is quite particular, when you know some of them, they will introduce you to others.
To find the local restaurants (consumer side), we found the influential chefs on Facebook and Instagram, and we talked to them and asked them to introduce others too.
Q. What was their first response?
(Ami Sugiyama) Some of them were like 🤔 for sure. But the nature of the Southeast Asia market is that they are fond of Japanese.
So before they were suspicious, they asked us about what we were doing and so on. Thanks to that, we could have the chance to explain more about our values and persuade them better.
In the first year, I carried 20kg of corn around the restaurants and gave some samples to them, store by store. So with that kind of presentation, we could show what we are trying to do.
And most of the consumers were keen to support us then. The restaurants who received our corn samples are still working with us and we still talk about this event even after 5~6 years. 😂🌽
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