Cermati secures Series C funding, led by MDI Venture

• Undisclosed funding led by MDI Venture, participation from Centauri Fund, Djarum Group
• Funds for enhancing tech offerings, strengthen partnership, product distribution

CERMATI Fintech Group (CFG) has raised an undisclosed Series C funding led by Indonesia’s multi-stage venture capital firm MDI Venture, which is backed by Telkom Indonesia.

The funding includes participation from MDI-KB’s Centauri Fund and existing shareholder Djarum Group, through Central Capital Ventura, it said in a statement.

CFG said it will use the additional funding to expand their team, bolster its product offering, further enhance its technology offerings, and strengthen partnership and product distribution.

CFG, a company said to leverage data analysis and machine learning to empower its partners in consumer banking, financing and insurance verticals to offer digital banking, micro-financing and insurance experience to underserved Indonesian consumers.

It allows its customers access to digital financial services through partnership with large ecosystems primarily within e-commerce and retail, it said.

The digital consumer financing initiatives are operated under the Indodana brand and the digital insurance initiatives are operated under the Cermati Protect brand. Both are registered and licensed by Indonesia’s financiall authority, the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK).

Cermati Protect works with partners to offer contextual insurance products. On the other hand Indodana works with partners to offer Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions to serve Indonesians that do not have access to credit cards.

Going forward, CFG said they will work to accelerate the pace of technology innovation to offer its partners and consumers to wider innovative digital financial product offerings.

“We are extremely thrilled to partner with MDI, which brings deep expertise in building digital first companies. We look forward to capitalising on MDI's strong network throughout Telkom, Telkomsel and state owned enterprise assets to enhance our product capability and assets.

“This investment and synergy will accelerate our vision in leveraging technology to help achieve financial inclusion,” said Andhy Koesnandar, chief executive officer (CEO and co-founder of Cermati.

“We are building embedded finance stack, by partnering with established financial institutions that enable financial services capabilities on our ecosystem partners,” added Carlo Gandasubrata, chief commercial officer and co-founder of Cermati.

“We believe that by embedding financial services in day to day scenarios make financial products more accessible to many more Indonesians.”

Donald Wihardja, CEO of MDI Venture, said: “We are very pleased to partner with CFG to help them grwo its product development and adoption by bridging access to 150 million telco users and hundreds of fintech use cases throughout Telkom Indonesia’s and its state-owned enterprises' (BUMN) networks, which potentially play an essential role in accelerating Indonesia's financial inclusion.”