Kudo Secures Additional Funding to Expand in Other Cities

Kudo, an O2O startup that focuses on building digital kiosks for e-commerce payments, announced it has secured an additional seven-digit funding round ($1-9 million), led by GREE Ventures and East Ventures, just six months after it received seed funding. The investment will fuel expansion to many cities in Indonesia. 500 Startups and IMJ Investment Partners also participated in this round.

Currently operating in Jabodetabek, Kudo's initial plan is to deploy 500 digital kiosks in universities, malls, and office buildings all across Jabodetabek. The digital kiosk functions as an electronic point-of-sale to help non-credit card owners doing online transactions. Customers may easily use their cash to buy phone credit, ticketing, or online game vouchers through agent-led digital kiosk.

With this investment, Kudo plans to expand regionally across Indonesian cities, where online shopping enthusiasm is high and the credit card ownership is still relatively low. Agung Nugroho, Kudo's Co-Founder and COO, in the press release said, "Around 70% of our existing customers are first time online buyers, and more than 40% of them are recurring buyers through us. The market demand for our service is very clear, and now it's time to scale."

Albert Lucius, Kudo's Co-Founder and CEO, added, "We strongly believe that Kudo's social commerce model will truly elevate Indonesia's e-commerce scene to the next level. Kudo is riding on the rise of e-commerce in Indonesia by enabling buyers to conveniently shop online, even without Internet."

In just three months of operation, Kudo reveals it regularly handles more than 600 transactions per day and aims to reach 8000 daily transactions in the next 3-6 months.

About this funding, Kuan Hsu, Principal of GREE Ventures, said, "This strategic investment will nicely complement our growing portfolio in Indonesia. The funds will be used to expand their wildly successful pilot program launched in early December."

Willson Cuaca, East Ventures' Managing Partner commented, Kudo platform is unique and probably only works in emerging countries. Albert and Agung have been showing determination to address the 81.4% unbanked population in Indonesia. The opportunity is humongous."