Emerging brands in beauty, fashion, and FMCG are building strong online followings and garnering traction, but breaking into offline retail remains a major challenge. The distribution networks are fragmented, the payment terms are complicated, and the tools to manage it all simply don't exist for smaller players. E-commerce has driven the first wave of growth for online brands. But when you’re a growing online brand ready to ride the next wave by going offline – where do you even start?
This is where our newest investment, Baskit, comes in.
Southeast Asia’s consumer goods market is large and growing, with Bain & Co. projecting private consumption to reach $5 trillion by 2035. In Indonesia, there is an estimated $200 to $300 billion GMV opportunity across FMCG, Fashion, Beauty, and Electronics. The Philippines also has a considerable market of ~$50 billion across similar categories, along with strong general trade channels, growing D2C brands, and a large FMCG market. Despite the size of the opportunity, smaller but emerging online brands struggle to fully access it, limiting their growth prospects.
Baskit’s vision is to be the connector of brands and distributors. They are a go-to-market platform that connects emerging brands with a wide network of distributors, wholesalers, and modern and general trade channels in Indonesia—and now with Kaya on board, soon in the Philippines.
When a brand joins Baskit, they gain immediate access to over 10,000 distribution partners, without needing to hunt for them manually. On the other side of the table, when a distributor joins, they get early access to high-potential, on-trend products from up-and-coming brands, along with the financing tools they need to actually stock them.
What differentiates Baskit from a simple marketplace is the depth of what it offers. Alongside distribution access, the platform includes an AI-powered business management suite — covering invoicing, payments, cash flow tracking, and embedded credit — all built to work alongside existing processes rather than replacing them.
One of the most promising parts of their growth roadmap is Baskit Boost, an embedded credit program launching in 2026. Through a partnership with Visa and major banks, Baskit gives distributors access to brand-linked credit cards that let them order now and pay the bank later, providing them with more efficient cash flow management. The brand gets paid upfront, the distributor gets up to 45-55 days of breathing room, and Baskit earns a fee on the payment volume. It's a model that helps both sides of the market grow without taking on unnecessary risk.
And Baskit’s core value proposition clearly works.
The company hit well over eight digits in annualized revenue by the end of 2025, serving 50 brands across Indonesia with a network of over 10,000 distribution partners. More importantly, they've been profitable since Q4 2024, delivering straight profitable quarters in a highly operationally heavy sector.
This performance is, in no small part, a reflection of the caliber of the founding team. CEO Yann Schuermans spent over a decade in corporate development and M&A across emerging markets, including time at Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest brewery. COO Abhishek Pansari spent years at Kraft Heinz and was one of the early employees at Ula, one of Indonesia's major B2B commerce platforms, accumulating learnings and scaling customer growth. CBO Yoonjung Yi brings a wealth of People Management experience, leading in companies like Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Lanvin Group. Together, they bring exactly the kind of deep market understanding and operational discipline this business demands.
The model also gets stronger the more it grows. Each brand that joins typically brings several distributors with it. Each new distributor adds to the platform's data and makes the credit product smarter. The financial partnerships with Visa and Tier 1 banks took years of compliance work to build and aren't easily replicated. And once a brand or distributor has integrated Baskit's tools into their daily workflows — from invoicing to ordering to payments — switching away becomes disruptive.
The Philippines is still primarily a consumer market. We believe that omnichannel has always been the path to sustainable growth for D2C brands. Moreover, our investment into Baskit touches on all three of Kaya Founders’ investment theses: Frictionless Business (through supply chain enablement), The New Filipino Consumer (empowering online D2C brands for offline growth), and Embedded Credit (with Baskit’s SME embedded credit product, Baskit Boost).
Beyond Indonesia, the playbook is designed to travel, with emerging brands across the rest of Southeast Asia looking to navigate a fragmented but massive offline supply chain. And Baskit is already planning its regional expansion, starting with the Philippines.
At Kaya, we look for founders who build with conviction and discipline, who know how to grow without losing control. In Yann and the team, we found exactly that. We're proud to partner with Baskit as they continue building the infrastructure that will help the next generation of Southeast Asian brands go further, faster.
