Touchstone Partners Backs F&B Procurement Platform Oda With $1M Seed Round Funding

Touchstone Partners, a Vietnam-based venture capital firm, announced this week they are leading a consortium committed to investing $1 million in Oda, an F&B e-commerce platform that aims to transform HORECA (hotels, restaurants, and catering) procurement into a more cost-saving, efficient process.

Founded in 2019, ODA’s mission is to innovate the F&B business. And they plan to accomplish that using the ODA Ecosystem — a service that is designed to reduce the management work and simplify the buying and selling of products. Its SaaS solution provides hotels, restaurants, cafes, and bakeries an easy-to-use way to not simply order and purchase foods but also to understand, track, and analyze their purchasing trends better over time, potentially saving high costs.

Oda will allocate the million-dollar fund to expand its core software technology, refine the app’s user interface, and invest in big data analytics to predict market trends and ingredients quantities better.

Bobby Liu, Director of EiR at Touchstone Partners, said the F&B industry is intensely competitive and price sensitive. They believe Oda’s solution enables restaurants and suppliers to address a significant industry pain point, better utilize human and financial resources, and reduce spoilage and waste.

To Bobby, Oda can also facilitate sustainable agriculture and help Vietnam’s farmers and food producers get their products into more venues.

“We’re impressed with what Jin and his team have developed to date as well as their ability to successfully navigate through the unprecedented challenges posed by covid last year, and we firmly believe in Oda’s enormous growth potential,” he said.

Just three years after Oda’s launch, the platform quickly became the leading B2B F&B platform, connecting over 120 suppliers with almost 500 customers in the country, including Baemin Kitchen, Belgo, and Lacaph. The Oda team is currently building out the intuitive platform on the web and mobile app environments to serve the digital transformation of the purchasing process.

According to Jin Lee, founder and CEO of Oda, who previously worked in the hospitality industry and had a first-hand experience with the flaws in the ingredients supply chain for both suppliers and restaurants, “it can be an inefficient process that generates an unnecessary amount of food waste, and I realized that a solution that digitalizes and streamlines ordering not only increases efficiency but also reduces wastage.”

The CEO said: “I am excited to have Touchstone Partners and the other investors in this round on board. With their support, I am confident that Oda will be a game changer for the F&B industry in Vietnam and potentially beyond.”

Based in Ho Chi Minh, Touchstone Partners has funded startups across the e-commerce, SaaS, healthcare technology, and electronic vehicle sectors. Touchstone Partners’ investment capital comes from Pavilion Capital, Cercano Management, and several major governmental and private financial institutions worldwide.