Funds invested via Bareksa hit US$72mil

• Had 110,000 users as at April 24, 2018
• Collaborates with e-commerce giants Tokopedia and Bukalapak

INDONESIA-based PT Bareksa Portal Investasi (Bareksa), an online platform that allows consumers to invest in mutual funds announced that the total amount of funds invested through its portal was at one trillion rupiah (US$72 million) as at April 24, 2018.

The value jumped 17.6% in 15 days from 850 billion rupiah (US$61.2 mil) on April 9, 2018 and rose 122% from 450 billion rupiah (US$32.4 million) in December 2017.

Bareksa president director Ady F Pangerang tells Digital News Asia that one trillion rupiah is still a small percentage compared to the size of the overall mutual fund industry.

“But it is very promising as Bareksa and its partners have brought in a number of new investors to boost the growth of this sector in Indonesia.”

According to a report in The Jakarta Post quoting Bareksa co-founder Karaniya Dharmasaputra, the growth of the funds managed by the financial marketplace was supported by the increase in the number of investors.

The number of mutual fund customers in Bareksa was approximately 110,000 as at April 24, 2018, a rise of 10% from 100,000 investors on April 9, 2018 and a 73% increase from 63,500 investors compared in December 2017.

According to the Indonesian Central Securities Depository (KSEI), there were 619,380 investors in Indonesia as of December 2017. Bareksa recorded a market share of about 17% based on this number of investors.

Ady says that other than offering a lower reference rate, people are investing more through Bareksa because of the lower barrier to entry through the digital portal and its wide variety of products.

“It takes just one or two minutes to complete the registration forms. Since you can access Bareksa through your mobile web or app, it means that you can monitor real time the position of your account and do transactions practically anywhere.

“As a marketplace we provide a wide selection of mutual funds, conventional or Syariah, equity, balanced, fixed income or money market. People can choose from a variety of quality products according to their risk profile. And finally, we also offer online education for people to have a better understanding about mutual funds.”

He adds that the platform will not charge any fee for transactions yet. The challenges for now, is formulating the product offerings to best fit the startups they are collaborating with.

“Other than that, I think every startup knows that we need to work together and grow together, hence they are all very open to collaboration.”

Bareksa collaborated with Tokopedia in February 2018 and Bukalapak in 2017 to allow users to purchase mutual funds through them.

“We collaborated with Tokopedia to optimise its clients’ existing funds in wallet from idle to productive by investing it in a money market mutual fund.

“Tokopedia made it such, that the user finds the feature simple and easy to understand. Combined with the low starting investment (from 10,000 rupiah) and with the huge number of Tokopedia visitors, the number of new investors in Indonesia could potentially grow very fast,” explains Ady.

It has also collaborated with Doku, by providing online mutual fund savings through it. In mid-2017, Bareksa cooperated with Mandiri e-Cash to facilitate the payment or purchase of mutual funds.

Ady says that several factors are driving public interest in mutual fund products, including the decline in the benchmark interest rate and the ease of buying mutual funds.

Karaniya explained that Bareksa has innovated in response to client needs and established strategic collaborations with leading institutions in developing digital innovation.

“There are two innovations in Bareksa and Tokopedia’s collaboration offering namely auto-sweep and instant-redemption. These two features are new to the Indonesian market.

“The first allows a to-up or any incoming fund in a user’s e-wallet to go directly into his mutual fund account while the second allows for the automatic redemption of mutual funds and makes funds available to users instantly when purchasing merchandise in Tokopedia,” elaborates Ady.

Bareksa received an undisclosed amount of funding from PT Gemilang Dana Sentosa, which also backed e-payment provider Doku and owned 20% of Bareksa’s stake in 2017.

Ady said they have started fundraising this year and, “some VC’s have already shown their interest and had discussions with us.”

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