In Southeast Asia, Indonesia is fast becoming a fintech powerhouse as investors continue to pour money into young, innovative startups seeking to tap into the country’s massive population of underbanked.
In the first nine months of 2021, Indonesian fintech companies raised a total of US$904 million in funding, representing 26% of total fintech funding across ASEAN and making Indonesia the country that raised the second largest sum for the year, according to a report by UOB, PwC Singapore and the Singapore Fintech Association.
With 785 fintech companies, Indonesia has the region’s second biggest fintech industry. 94 of these ventures were established in the country just between the end of 2019 and 2021, showcasing Indonesia’s vibrant startup ecosystem.
Out of these ventures, we’ve selected seven early-stage fintech startups to watch closely this year. These startups were all founded within the past two years but are already making waves, having secured funding from prominent investors and recorded strong customer growth in 2021.
UpBanx is developing a fintech platform for creators, brands, freelancers and agencies, to help them manage their money, financing, grow commercial partnerships, launch digital assets and raise investments.
The startup aims to tap into Indonesia’s booming marketing and influencer market that have been driven by the growth of social media combined with the amount of time spent by Indonesians on online media.
UpBanx has yet to launch its platform, but the startup, which was founded just last year, already closed a US$5.2 million pre-seed round which it plans to use to accelerate its product development and business growth.
Founded in 2021, Finku is a personal finance platform that allows users to create a single view of their finances from more than 20 banks, investment platforms and e-wallets. It claims to offer the most comprehensive account integrations and personal finance tools in Indonesia.
The app leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automatically categorize transactions and measure users’ financial wellness. It comprises features including graphs and reports, bills and subscriptions management, as well as budget management.
Finku, which strives to improve financial literacy in Indonesia, raised an undisclosed pre-seed funding round from Global Founders Capital and 500 Startups last year to enter the digital bookkeeping service.
Founded in late 2021, Monit is a business-to-business (B2B) fintech startup that provides an all-in-one expense management platform, helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage their finances, pay their bills, manage reimbursements and disbursements and issue corporate credit cards.
Monit began onboarding clients in January 2022 and has already partnered with Visa, Mastercard and CIMB Niaga to provide corporate cards for businesses.
The startup secured funding from 1982 Ventures and Init 6 earlier this year. It’s planning on launching new products, including a real card offering, as well as a treasury product that would allow SMEs to get investment return from their idle cash.
Established in 2020, Sribuu, formerly known as Chat Alia, is a financial app featuring AI-driven financial analytics tools designed to help users spend smarter and build their saving habit.
The app automatically tracks how much money goes in and out of a user’s accounts at major banks and e-wallet services, recording and analyzing their spending. The app also gives them personalized recommendations based on their financial habits.
Sribuu said in September 2021 that it boasted over 45,000 users and had analyzed transactions worth 2.3 trillion rupiah (around US$161.4 million). This represents a 36x user growth in its number of customers since the launch of the beta version of its app in early 2021. The company closed an undisclosed pre-seed funding round led by Beenext last year to improve its services and fuel its growth.
Founded in 2020, Brick builds financial APIs for fintech products, focusing on simplifying the processing of end-user’s financial data from various sources including telcos, e-wallet, e-commerce, and super apps.
Brick’s 25+ data partners include some of Indonesia’s largest banks, and the company claims more than 50 paying clients, almost one million consumers and more than 13 million API calls a month. It says it covers nearly all financial data in Indonesia (99.98%) and has plans to expand into Singapore and the Philippines in the near future before eventually covering all markets in Southeast Asia.
Brick closed a US$8.5 million in seed funding last month, which it said it will use to strengthen its presence in Indonesia and fund its regional expansion plans.
Founded in 2020, GajiGesa is a financial wellness app that provides member employees with earned wage access (EWA), financial education, and other financial management tools to help them improve their long-term financial health.
GajiGesa’s EWA product is aimed at unbanked workers, allowing users to withdraw their wages immediately and protecting them from predatory lenders. For employer partners, GajiGesa provides an employee management solution app called GajiTim that allows them to manage a wide array of workforce administrative tasks, including part-time and full-time employees and gig workers. The solution claims more than 200,000 users.
GajiGesa says it has been working with more than 120 companies in a wide range of sectors, including factories, plantations, manufacturing, retail, restaurants, hospitals and tech companies. Last year, the startup raised a total of US$9.1 million through two rounds to further develop its products, expand across Indonesia and enter new Southeast Asian markets.
Founded in 2020, Finantier is an open finance startup, offering an API and infrastructure. The solution allows financial institutions to access and analyze consumer financial data, and build innovative fintech products.
The company currently operates in Singapore and Indonesia and claims to be working with more than 150 companies, giving clients access to a comprehensive range of datasets.
In June 2021, Finantier raised an undisclosed 7-figure sum in a seed funding round led by Global Founders Capital and East Ventures, which it said it will use to expand its team, supercharge its proprietary technology, and expand into other emerging markets.
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