Indonesia’s BukuKas raises US$50mil Series B funding

• Funding to be deployed to strengthen leadership team, engineering & product capabilities
• Onboarded 6.3 million businesses; records US$25.9bil annualised transaction value

BUKUKAS, an Indonesia startup creating digital solutions for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), announced that it has raised US$50 million in Series B funding.

The funding round included participation from angels Gokul Rajaram and Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise, it said in a statement.

This new round comes four months after BukuKas’ US$10 million Series A round, led by Sequoia Capital India.

Initially incubated by Whiteboard Capital, BukuKas was launched in December 2019 with the goal of meeting the changing needs of Indonesia’s MSMEs, and has since expanded from a simple digital ledger app enabling small business owners to record and better manage their sales and expenses to one that provides inventory management, invoicing, and analytics.

As of April 2021, BukuKas has on-boarded 6.3 million small traders and shop owners across its platforms, which have a combined three million monthly active users (MAU).

Its users is said to record an annualised transaction value of nearly US$25.9 billion (approximately Rp 360 trillion), equivalent to 2.2% of Indonesia’s GDP, the startup claimed. By the end of 2022, BukuKas aims to on-board 20 million MSMEs.

The startup said the fresh funds will be deployed to strengthen BukuKas’ leadership team, engineering and product capabilities in both its Jakarta and Bangalore offices, as well as expand the range of services offered to merchants.

This is in line with the company’s vision to provide an end-to-end software stack to small businesses in Indonesia, it added.

“We are grateful for the trust from our investors – both new and existing – who believe in our team and our vision to digitise Indonesian MSMEs.

“We are delighted to have them on board for the next phase of our journey and this new investment round will fuel our growth as we continue to build out an all-in-one financial solution for small businesses, which we believe are the backbone of Indonesia,” said Krishnan Menon, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of BukuKas.

The funding round announcement follows BukaKas releasing its new payment feature, BukuKasPay, in mid April . With this new feature, BukuKas is said to be able to enable small business owners to pay their suppliers on time and to collect money digitally from their customers.

It does so through various digital payment methods such as Bank Virtual Accounts, QRIS, and popular electronic wallets such as OVO, DANA, GoPay, LinkAja, and Shopeepay.

Within just 4 weeks since BukuKasPay’s launch, the company claimed it had tens of millions of US dollars of monthly payments flowing through the platform.

In September 2020, BukuKas acquired a digital ledger app Catatan Keuangan Harian to expand market share, it said. 

Soon after, it launched a commerce enablement platform Tokko to help merchants to sell more effectively on social commerce channels and set up online stores.

Lorenzo Peracchione, COO and co-founder of BukuKas, said: “Indonesia is home to more than 60 million MSMEs who generate over 60% of the country’s GDP.

“Small merchants are increasingly looking for simple digital solutions to their daily problems, from being on top of their cash flows to generating and handling more WhatsApp orders.

“BukuKas wants to become the preferred merchant ecosystem partner to help small business owners thrive and grow in our digital age. Following the launch of BukuKasPay, we will continue to build trust with our merchants and support them with full suite banking and commerce solutions in the near future.”