According to the World Bank, Indonesia produces 4.8 million tons of “poorly managed” plastic waste each year – meaning it ends up uncollected, in landfills or leaking from poorly managed landfills. a platform that makes it easier to collect waste products from consumers and recycle them into reusable raw materials for brands. The Jakarta-based startup announced today that it has raised $5 million in oversubscriptions led by Openspace and SOSV.
Octopus was founded last year by Mohammad Ichsan, Hamish Daud, Niko Adi Nugroho, Rizki Mardian and Dimas Ario, who have known each other for more than a decade.
After its recent launch in Jakarta, it will use its new funding for an “aggressive expansion” that includes five sorting facilities and 1,700 checkpoints in four cities – Jakarta, Bandung, Bali and Makassar – with a goal of processing 380 tons of everything from plastics to electronics every month.
Ichsan says one reason he started Octopus was because he returned to his parents’ home in Makassar for a vacation and found the unbearable stench emanating from a landfill 30 kilometers away, especially considering he had a newborn daughter.
“I wondered what kind of world she would be living in,” he told TechCrunch. “Obviously the problem wasn’t happening in some cities, but it wasn’t happening in other cities in Southeast Asia either, so I started exploring more business through manual waste trading and trying to solve the problem one step at a time. step-by-step problem solving, starting with reducing recyclable waste through manual waste trading and eventually going to landfills.”
Around that time, Ischan met co-founder Daud, who had the same concerns and had been working on marine waste.
Octopus also points to the Indonesian government’s regulations for a waste collective known as the 3Rs, or “reuse, reduce and recycle,” which aims to reduce the amount of plastic marine litter in the ocean by 70 percent. The government has reinforced these goals through initiatives such as garbage banking, enforcing recycling targets for brands and producers, and charging consumers for plastic bags.
Octopus says the Indonesian government will spend $5.1 billion to create a circular economy for more brands by 2025. It claims to be “the first platform to offer an end-to-end logistics platform for recyclable waste management.
The company says it has grown by more than 400 percent in the last six months, with users at both ends of the supply chain. This includes 150,000 monthly users and more than 60,000 pelestari or independent waste collectors. It claims that since joining Octopus, more than 12,000 pelestari have been able to open bank accounts. At the other end of the supply chain, Octopus serves more than 20 brands, including global FMCG companies that use Octopus to help meet ESG compliance requirements. One of its goals is to reach 100,000 pelestari by 2024.
Ischan said Octopus offers two main services. The first is the sale of post-consumer materials to the recycling industry, and the second is data collection reports for FMCG brands. For example, it helps Softex Indonesia collect used diapers from consumers and obtain proper handling standard operating procedures from pelestari, who work as odd jobs.
For pelestari who don’t have mobile access to the Octopus app, Ischan said the company is working with the Social Welfare Department to provide cell phones as part of the local municipality’s plan to address unemployment in its area.
In a prepared statement, Openspace founding partner Shane Chesson said, “Octopus is leading the way in leveraging technology to create a step change in the scale of Indonesia’s circular economy. Participants at all stages of this supply chain are motivated to make this happen, and most importantly, environmental requirements require us to do so.”