Ayoconnect Pockets Series B Funding Worth 215 Billion Rupiah

After pocketing B pre-series funding worth $10 million at the end of 2021, Ayoconnect again announced funding for their series B round. This time, the investment value obtained was $15 million (equivalent to IDR215 billion). This latest round was led by Tiger Global, a venture capital firm that has also invested in JD, Microsoft and Amazon.

This funding round also gets participation from companies payment gateway global PayU and investment management firm Alto Partners, as well as individual investors Jerry Ng (President Commissioner of Bank Jago) and William Hockey (co-founder of the company fintech plaids).

Furthermore, Ayoconnect will use the fresh funds from this funding round to develop innovations and launch new products, including the Direct Debit API. Ayoconnect's Direct Debit API enables retail companies to provide payment features via automatic debit from buyer accounts from six well-known Indonesian banks.

This feature is believed to increase the convenience of buyers, because buyers no longer need to make manual transfers or enter debit or credit card information when transacting. Currently, Ayoconnect is undergoing a discussion process to embrace more financial institutions into its ecosystem.

In a release received by DailySocial.id, Ayoconnect Co-Founder & CEO Jakob Rost said, his company's experience in building financial infrastructure in Indonesia for six years has made it a platform for open finance strong and most needed in Indonesia.

Ayoconnect wants to build the most complete ecosystem that can support business growth of companies of various scales, both those that have been around for a long time to prospective ones tech unicorns in the future. We are proud of the trust the world's biggest investors have placed in realizing our vision."

Business growth

Sebagai platform open finance, currently Ayoconnect has 500 million APIs hits every year. The API solutions that Ayoconnect has built have been used by more than 200 companies, including leading financial institutions and technology companies in Indonesia.

Official partnerships with major Indonesian banks also allow Ayoconnect to provide alternative data services that include customer financial information—both those who already have access to banking services. (banked) or not (unbanked)—to help companies make more informed decisions and provide personalized financial services to their customers.

Ayoconnect was founded in 2016 by Jacob with his two colleagues Chiragh Kirpalani (Co-Founder and COO) and Adi Vora (Co-Founder and CTO) with a focus on building API-based solutions for bill payments and other digital products. Now the company provides API services for various needs, which they refer to as Full Stack APIs (including: Financial APIs, Bill APIs, Open Finance APIs, and Insights APIs).

Platform open finance in Indonesia

The potential that can be generated by the open finance platform is indeed very large amid the growth of the fintech business message in Indonesia. Simply put, the open finance platform allows various digital application developers to provide fintech capabilities in their services (embedded).

Besides Ayoconnect, currently there are several other players who also present open finance solutions, namely Brick, Safe, Finantier, and others. Safe itself earlier this year also announced the acquisition series B funding 287 billion Rupiah led by Insignia Ventures. Meanwhile, Finantier has received support from Y Combinator, East Ventures, and a number of other investors.

On the regulatory side, ecosystem open finance also supported by the existence of Open API standardization which was inaugurated last year by Bank Indonesia. This is an important milestone, considering that the platform developers are peddling their solutions via API connection to their customers.