Evermos began with a frustration. Ghufron Mustaqim has said that he and his co-founders were dissatisfied with how retail worked in Indonesia. Goods passed through layer after layer of distributors, and each layer added a margin. Online, the other problem was fake products. Prices went up and trust went down.
Evermos was founded in November 2018 by four people: Mustaqim, Iqbal Muslimin, Ilham Taufiq and Arip Tirta. Their answer was social commerce. A reseller picks products from a catalogue and sells them inside her own circle of friends, family and community, mostly through chat apps. She never buys inventory. Evermos holds the stock, packs the order, ships it and handles customer questions. Brands pay a commission of around 30%, and most of it is shared with the reseller.
With nearly 90 per cent of Indonesians Muslim, Mustaqim argued, building for the Muslim market meant building for almost everyone.
What almost nobody saw coming was where it would work. Evermos did not start in Jakarta's malls. By 2021 about 100,000 active resellers were spread across more than 500 Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, mostly in Java. Most of them were selling online for the first time, so the company ran training in the app and sometimes in person. The best resellers earned about US$200 a month, which in a smaller city is a real second income.
The product mix was shaped by the audience. With nearly 90 per cent of Indonesians Muslim, Mustaqim argued, building for the Muslim market meant building for almost everyone. Fashion, halal health and beauty items, and food and drink from small Indonesian brands filled the catalogue, more than 500 brands by 2021.
Investors saw it too. A Series A of about US$8.3m reportedly came in December 2019 with Jungle Ventures. In September 2021, a US$30m Series B led by UOB Venture Management's Asia Impact Investment Fund II followed, and a Series C of roughly US$39-40m was reported in 2023. Transaction volume rose more than 60 times in the two years before the Series B.
The cost was in the unglamorous parts. Shipping out of small cities is expensive. Inventory has to be close to the buyer. The team spent its new money on warehouses closer to resellers, analytics and the recommendation tools that help a reseller choose what to push.
The lesson sits in the friction. Evermos did not invent selling to friends. It removed the three things that stopped ordinary people doing it: stock, shipping and trust. If you want a market that has never bought from you, find the step they dread and take it off their hands.