In Jakarta, the cheapest way to ship a pallet of rattan furniture to Rotterdam is still to call three forwarders, wait two days, and hope one of them answers in dollars. Andalin's bet, since 2016, is that a small Indonesian exporter would rather just open a browser.
The company, legally PT. Eximku Teknologi Indonesia, runs a digital freight marketplace where SMEs book air courier, air cargo, and full or less-than-container loads, with customs clearance bolted onto the same checkout [Founder Institute, ~2022].
The wedge: customs, not containers
The global names Andalin lists as competitors, DHL, FedEx, and UPS, are very good at moving a 2-kilogram parcel from Surabaya to Hamburg. They are less good, and considerably more expensive, at walking a first-time exporter through a HS code, a PEB declaration, and an Indonesian customs broker (PPJK) license [Founder Institute, ~2022]. Andalin's wedge is the paperwork, not the planes.
That matters because Indonesian export-import value grew from roughly $300 billion in 2020 to $430 billion in 2021 [Jakarta Globe]. The marginal new shipper in that $130 billion of growth is, by definition, someone who has never filed a customs form before.
A quiet but persistent cap table
Intudo Ventures led the $4M round in February 2022 [e27, February 2022], with Cardig Group, BEENEXT, and BRI Ventures alongside [Intudo Ventures]. A further $1.5M labelled Series C landed in October 2024 [CBInsights, October 2024].
| Round | Amount |
|---|---|
| Seed 2017 | Undisclosed |
| Series A 2021 | Undisclosed |
| Venture 2022 | $4.0M |
| Series C 2024 | $1.5M |
The traction the company will actually quote
At its Founder Institute showcase in April 2022, Andalin reported 690% growth in monthly revenue and a 10.6x increase in containers shipped [Founder Institute, April 2022]. The more durable signals are the partnerships:
- Vietnam Industrial Estate MoU. Andalin signed an MoU with VIE to channel cross-border SME shipments along the Indonesia-Vietnam corridor [Jakarta Globe].
- Philippines DTI tie-up. A collaboration with the Philippines Department of Trade and Industry put Andalin inside a government-blessed trading workflow [Founder Institute, Q3 2022].
- Aspermigas collaboration. A working arrangement with the Indonesian oil and gas suppliers' association extends shipping services [MediaIndonesia].
- Hiring on the broker side. Open intern roles for Admin PPJK in Jakarta and Admin Operation in Surabaya suggest the customs desk is the constraint [Glints] [Kalibrr, April 2023].
Where the wheels could come off
The honest counterfactual is that digital freight forwarding is a category littered with companies that scaled GMV faster than gross margin. Andalin's smaller checks and slower cadence look defensive against that exact failure mode, but they also mean the company has less runway to outspend an incumbent who decides Jakarta SMEs are worth a price war.
The back of the envelope
Assume an Indonesian SME ships one 20-foot container per quarter to Southeast Asia at a delivered cost of roughly $2,500, of which a digital forwarder might capture 8% in net take, or $200. To support a 51 to 200 person team at, say, a fully loaded $25,000 per head per year, the midpoint headcount of 125 implies about $3.1M in annual opex. That requires roughly 15,500 booked containers a year, or about 1,300 a month, to cover costs on freight take alone. Layer in customs clearance fees at $50 a shipment and the breakeven container count drops meaningfully.
The incumbent Andalin most needs to beat is not FedEx. It is DHL Global Forwarding's Indonesian SME desk. If Andalin can put that same desk on a browser tab for less, the $130 billion of new trade flow has to land somewhere.