Jay-Z, Serena Williams invest in Indonesian coffee chain Kopi Kenangan
- The rapper and the US tennis star have injected an undisclosed amount into the Jakarta-based grab-and-go coffee chain
- The firm plans to add more than 1,000 new outlets over the next two years and expand across Southeast Asia
Founded in 2017 by school friends Edward Tirtanata, James Prananto and Cynthia Chaerunnisa, Kopi Kenangan raised US$20 million from Sequoia India in June. Last year, Kopi Kenangan pulled in US$8 million in seed funding from Alpha JWC. Series A funding is the name given to a company’s first significant funding from investors to grow the business.
The latest round of investments come courtesy of Williams-backed Serena Ventures and Arrive, an arm of entertainment company Roc Nation, which was founded by billionaire singer Jay-Z.
Basketball star Caris LeVert and Jonathan Neman, CEO of Sweetgreen, a start-up connecting food growers and consumers, have also injected cash into the Jakarta-based grab-and-go coffee chain.
“Kopi Kenangan has the vision to take [the brand] internationally on the global stage. That is why we decided to find investors that could help us with such brand-building,” the firm’s CEO Tirtanata told The Jakarta Post.