The p2p lending startup Amartha officially secured funding of $28 million or around 450 billion Rupiah. The funding was led by Women’s World Banking (WWB) through WWB Capital Partners II and MDI Ventures, also the two previous investors, Mandiri Capital Indonesia and YOB Venture Management.
Amartha’s Founder & CEO, Andi Taufan Garuda Putra said the new investment will be used to strengthen the business, accelerate product innovation development, and introduce additional services for borrowers and lenders. Some of them include shop loans, crowdfunding, and direct funding to borrowers.
So far, the company has developed solutions for three user segments, namely disbursing funding through the p2p lending platform (Amartha for Lenders), a field team to process business capital loans as a whole (Amartha for Business Partners), and other financial services in addition to distributing business capital ( Amartha for Partners)
Amartha is WWB’s first portfolio in Southeast Asia. It is known, WWB Capital Partners II is a gender lens investment founded by WWB, a global non-profit organization that focuses on women’s financial inclusion for the last 40 years.
WWB’s representative, Yrenilsa Lopez said the investment aims to close the gender gap by entering into financial service providers that focus on serving the low-income segment of women. That way, Amartha can expand the gender diversity in their management and take advantage of innovative solutions to reach more markets.
Previously, Amartha obtained debt funding of $50 million or equivalent to 704.4 billion Rupiah in February from Lendable. Currently, Amartha has channeled IDR3.55 trillion loan to more than 661,369 ultra-micro women entrepreneurs in more than 18,900 villages in Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi.
In addition, Amartha has improved the quality of credit scoring with the ratio of non-performing loans (NPL) at 0.07% for all funding in the period after June 2020.
Synergy with Telkom
Furthermore, MDI Ventures’ CEO, Donald Wihardja added that this investment will create opportunities to work together with the Telkom Group. This synergy is none other than to digitize and increase financial inclusion in rural areas in Indonesia.
“We see promising potential to increase financial inclusiveness. We hope this investment can continue Amartha’s business transformation to serve the lower pyramid communities in Indonesia,” he said.
Previously, Donald had mentioned that MDI Ventures received a new mandate with a new managed fund of $500 million from Telkom. It is to expand collaboration or synergy, not only with the Telkom Group but with all SOEs.
Donald said, this new assignment was given after MDI’s success in managing $100 million in funds since 2015. MDI succeeded in multiplying the fund, not only on paper valuations, but also in the form of liquidity in several exits, private and IPOs. He said, MDI had provided IDR 1.6 trillion synergy/revenue to the Telkom Group.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian
