13/11/2018 – Indonesian fintech startup AwanTunai announced that it has secured a Series A funding round worth US$4.3 million led by Insignia Venture Partners and AMTD Group. The round was also joined by Global Brain, Fenox Venture Capital, and other affiliates.
Founded by Dino Setiawan, Windy Natriavi, and Rama Notowidigdo, AwanTunai is a point-of-sale (POS) financing solution aimed at digitizing Indonesia’s vast cash economy.
The startup provides a holistic financing solution for micro-merchants, acting as a digital distribution platform to thousands of micro-retail merchants who can get access to ready working capital as well as accepting payment from AwanTunai consumer credit.
Besides, AwanTunai also offers Indonesian banks and multi-finance companies the ability to reach customers not covered by their branch networks. Loan origination costs are low through automated digital processes, which reduce the cost of accessing the previously underserved mass market.
Dino Setiawan, the CEO of AwanTunai said, “We recognize that the fintech’s strength is to help existing financial institutions gain wider distribution into underserved markets and lower origination costs. We hope to enable Indonesia’s banks to provide the whole country access to affordable high-quality credit services.”
A member of the PayPal Singapore incubator program, the startup also offers mobile-based credit to 100 million Indonesians unable to access banking products.
As of October 2018, AwanTunai claims to have served 300,000 loan applications. The startup targets to provide working capital loans to 5,000 micro-merchants by the fourth quarter of 2018.
With the freshly raised fund, AwanTunai plans to expand its merchant acceptance network, improve its engineering and data analytics capabilities, in addition to expanding its on-the-ground risk management capabilities.
Commenting on the deal, Insignia Ventures Partners managing partner Yinglan Tan said, “We firmly believe the future of financial services lies with digital banks. Our investment in AwanTunai reflects their ability to be an enabler of incumbent banks to adopt the technologies necessary to deploy digital banking products.”
