(L-R) Tjetak co-founders Raffisal Damanhuri, Anggara Pranaspati, and Hasandi Patriawan

Indonesia-based business packaging specialist startup Tjetak has secured an undisclosed sum in Series A funding, led by Vertex Ventures.

The new round will help Tjetak to serve more businesses by providing custom packaging that is “fit-to-purpose”, it said in a statement.

“We plan to use this funding for three primary allocations, namely the expansion of operational areas and strengthening of human resources, the development of new features, and the improvement of our lab capacity and packaging facilities,” said Co-founder Anggara Pranaspati.

Tjetak was founded in 2018 by three alumni of the University of Indonesia — Pranaspati, Raffisal Damanhuri, and Hasandi Patriawan.

According to Pranaspati, since the outbreak of COVID-19, many Indonesians started SME businesses while enterprises recorded an increase in online-based transactions. The number of SMEs joining e-commerce platforms is also on the rise. As per a Tokopedia data, the number of sellers joining its e-commerce platform has increased by 250 per cent.

These businesses are likely to need professionally-designed packaging to enhance their brand value.

“From our observation, the packaging industry has several pain points. Firstly, the process of getting price quotes requires a long time and complicated specifications. Second, improper packaging design can also cause losses, both in price and final product. Third, the production process tends to not be transparent. Clients are finding it difficult to predict production time and might incur losses when the production is not on-time for any reason,” explained Pranaspati.