BRI Ventures Participates in Injecting Funds into Bukalapak

BRI Ventures, arm investment from Bank BRI, announced strategic funding with an undisclosed nominal for Bukalapak. This agreement is in line with Bank BRI's mission to support and digitize the MSME sector throughout the country, which is in line with Bukalapak's mission. It is said that currently there are more than 13,5 million MSMEs joining the Bukalapak digital ecosystem.

In an official statement, Bank BRI will be able to offer banking products and digital loans to customers merchant and customers at Bukalapak. The hope is that inclusion of financial access is getting wider to develop the businesses of the merchant. The reason is, according to data from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, MSMEs contribute greatly to GDP with a percentage of 60,34 percent and absorb 58,18% of total investment in Indonesia.

CEO BRI Ventures Nicko Widjaja explained, “This strategic investment in Bukalapak is very important because it is in line with the BRI Group's mission to support MSMEs. With the massive growth of digital MSMEs as we see today, we believe that they will become the pillars of support for our national economy in the future. This is also part of BRI Ventures' commitment to strengthen the technology startup sector in Indonesia."

The latest data from the country's central bank shows as many as 87,5% of MSMEs were affected by the economic downturn driven by the pandemic. However, this also shows that 27,6% of MSMEs operating independently online really see an increase in sales in 2020 and beyond. This illustrates the growing importance for companies of all shapes and sizes to embrace online business models and digital adaptation in emerging Asia.

In recent years, Bukalapak has gone from model e-marketplaces, Becomes fintech and digital services. Via platform online-to-offline Bukalapak partners, the company has reached more than 13,5 million MSMEs and more than 100 million users throughout the archipelago.

In 2019, Bukalapak launched a business unit e-procurement B2B through BukaProcurement Indonesia. Then launched a mutual fund trading platform (BukaReksa). With these products, there will be even more collaboration between the two companies. Bukalapak's business roadmap is in line with what the BRI Group brings, not limited to digital loan and savings products for business owners.

The entry of BRI Ventures has added to the ranks of Bukalapak's investors for the last two years. Yesterday, DailySocial reported a total of $234 million in series G funds raised by Bukalapak from various levels of investors, such as GIC, Microsoft, EMTEK, Standard Chartered, Naver and Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund. Together with Standard Chartered, via nexus, Bukalapak will be a funnel for service development Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS).