New life to old items

• Many may associate secondhand goods with compromising on quality, but that is often far from the truth! Case in point: 500-backed recommerce marketplace Carousell collaborated with IKEA Hong Kong to make display items and discontinued models available to the public at discounted prices.
• The two companies share common ground when it comes to recycling, responsible green shopping, and motivating individuals to rethink their relationship with nature and change their habit of over-consumption.
• Kevin Huang, Managing Director at Carousell HK said, “We are honored to work with IKEA to make secondhand furniture shopping more accessible in Hong Kong. Adopting sustainable consumption patterns is important for our environment, and we are encouraged to see growing interest in Hong Kong towards choosing secondhand items for sustainability reasons.”
• In addition to IKEA, furn.outlet, a furniture wholesaler, is also tapping on Carousell to sell items that had been put on display or lightly damaged.
• Read the full article on Marketing Interactive.

Grocery shopping, reimagined

• What is the perfect grocery shopping experience? 500-backed e-grocer HappyFresh found the answer in HappyFresh Supermarket, the company’s own line of cloud warehouses. Cloud warehouses are inventory stores that are built only for deliveries, not walk-ins.
• HappyFresh will continue to work with retailers to deliver groceries, while its new supermarket arm will offer different brands. “It’s been clear over the past couple of years that people want to make a saving but they don’t want to have the cheapest product all the time,” said Johan Antlov, Chief Growth Officer, adding that with this model, they can offer low prices, free delivery, and no out-of-stock moments.
• “For us, it was really about building our own paths and how we envision a supermarket to be. We wanted to have end-to-end control over the whole experience, which means from the products that are shown to the customers, to the prices that we have decided [on], to the fulfillment experience,” Johan explained.
• Thanks to the data and knowledge HappyFresh has acquired over the past few years, the team is confident that it is able to address the exact needs of customers.
• Read the full feature story on VulcanPost.

Prevention is better than cure

• Disease can wipe out an entire shrimp pond in just five days. This is the number one challenge facing shrimp aquaculture today, according to Gibran Huzaifah, CEO of 500-backed aquatech startup eFishery.
• To address this grave issue, the company joined a new shrimp health alliance to develop SEATRU, a platform that offers precision dosing recommendations to farmers. The two-year research project will culminate in commercial scale-up.
• The technology monitors the conditions of shrimp farms in order to anticipate and reduce diseases.
• Gibran said, “Our main objective is to provide shrimp farmers in Indonesia with peace of mind, and the tools to produce  stable performance and improved harvests throughout the year. The SEATRU concept brings that stability and potential for growth to farmers.”
• Read the full article here.