11/10/2019 – Sampingan, an on-demand workforce startup based in Indonesia, has secured US$1.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Golden Gate Ventures with participation from Antler and other angel investors.
Sampingan, which means side job in Bahasa Indonesia, is a platform providing Indonesians with jobs across the country and letting agents become resellers for small and medium-sized companies. It leverages on a network of over 150,000 agent-partners across the country who have direct access and insights into second and third-tier Indonesian cities and towns.
Through their platform, businesses can complete specific tasks, such as merchant acquisition, data collection, distribution and collection, as well as dispatch in various parts of Indonesia. Using their service, Sampingan claims that they have been able to save businesses up to 70 percent on their manpower costs.
“Sampingan has identified a pain point and a problem that resonates with people. We believe they will scale significantly with their model to provide employment to Indonesians and fill a unique gap for employers in the market,” Jussi Salovaara, the co-founder and Managing Partner of Antler told Asia One.
In fact, according to Sampingan, the manpower business opportunity is currently driven by Indonesia’s strong economic growth where more companies require specific needs that need to be met within a short time frame.
Since entering the market in January 2019, Sampingan has grown from a team of three to 60 people based out of Jakarta. Its founder Wisnu Nugrahadi has worked with GoJek before and set up Sampingan in order to ensure the ease of productivity and enable them to have access to the right workforce at the right time as they grow rapidly.
Its customer portfolio now includes Gojek, Oyo, Uniliever, and Danone, and the startup even has a long-term partnership with a cloud-based point of sales Moka. The collaboration has enabled Moka to acquire new merchants and increased their e-wallet transaction, increasing their user base by 20 percent.
“At Sampingan, we are emphasizing product and tech development to remove as many barriers as possible. Equal access to jobs give our agent-partners more control in their lives. More control means more time, more time to spend with their families and more time to become better versions of themselves. We want to use Sampingan to enable this kind of positive change” said Wisnu Nugrahadi, the CEO of Sampingan.
Commenting on the deal, Golden Gate Ventures’ partner Justin Hall said, “We are excited and expect to see amazing things coming out of this company over the next few years. Sampingan offers a really intriguing value proposition: the ability to launch large-scale, labour intensive campaigns economically, quickly, and effectively across Indonesia.”
With the latest capital funding, the on-demand workforce platform plans to expand their operations and provide businesses with wider options to scale.
