KUALA LUMPUR: BROKU – Malaysia’s leading food and beverage (F&B) branding and marketing strategist – is currently working to raise RM 20 million in funds for its expansion over the next 12 to 18 months. Notably, Retail Group Malaysia reports that Malaysian F&B kiosks and stalls experienced significant growth of 13.5% throughout 2023, aligning with BROKU’s mission to support, structure, and supply the growth of Malaysia’s F&B MSMEs. With this in mind, alongside the fundraising, BROKU is launching its flagship product, Broku.com – a digital marketplace specifically for the F&B industry that uses data-driven technology to customise user engagement and drive traffic into merchant outlets.
To date, BROKU has helped almost 10,000 restaurants so far in the complete transformation of their businesses. Furthermore, the brand has also raised additional funds totalling RM 2.566 million through angel investors. With the total funds raised, BROKU will be able to expand its Malaysian team capacity, as well as funnel resources into other initiatives including its marketing efforts, customer acquisition strategies, technology expenses, and other operational enhancements.
This will enable the company to not only channel additional funding to restaurants, but also to increase its marketing expenses. With this, BROKU will then be able to strengthen its in-house technological infrastructure, as well as grow its partner restaurant network. For the Broku.com platform, the brand aims for 50,000 merchants to be listed on the platform within 12 months.
“Personally, I have spent over two decades of my career in the entrepreneurship space – specifically in the food and beverage sector – but this is a brand new, monumental, and life-changing milestone not just for me, but for the company,” says Ku Addyfazly Ku Radin (Broku), Founder of BROKU. “It has been such an honour to help local F&B MSMEs turn their businesses around since 2020, especially thinking about how I would have appreciated access to the amount of resources and knowledge a brand like BROKU can provide at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey.”
Through the extensive collection of transactional data and monitoring of key performance metrics, BROKU also aims to become a bridge for underserved and underbanked F&B merchants to have better access to credit and financing facilities. In fact, this initiative is designed to help address the RM90 billion financing gap between large corporations and Malaysian MSMEs. In line with this, the brand’s secondary offerings include its BROKU Licensing Program (BLP), first launched in April 2023. Through the program, 200 companies so far – in various stages of business growth – have learned essential business skills, including honing their online presence through marketing and advertising, and enhancing their supply chain management by leveraging cutting-edge technology. In addition, the BLP supports F&B merchants in boosting their financial literacy, including aspects such as navigating financial documentation and management.
This specialised F&B business incubation programme not only provides these underserved participants access to BROKU’s extensive industry network and 24/7 centralised knowledge hub, but also was designed to upskill and upgrade the calibre of local F&B entrepreneurs. Overall, the BLP aims to help 3,000 merchants, with a success rate of 86% of participants experiencing growth between 35% to 90%. Most recently, for the merchants currently involved with the BLP, there has been a cumulative RM 15 million client revenue increase in total.
“I am proud to say that we actually saw a 35.6% average increase in revenue for our program participants so far,” adds Broku. “With this funding goal, we hope to be able to reach out to even more local MSMEs and ultimately supercharge the Malaysian F&B scene with business-savvy, world-wise entrepreneurs who will experience sustainable, consistent growth moving forward.”
