BukuKas Gets Pre-Series A Funding Worth 134 Billion Rupiah

BukuKas, a startup that offers financial management solutions for SMEs, announced that it has successfully secured a pre-series A funding of $9 million or equivalent to 134 billion Rupiah. The new investors involved in this round of funding are Surge (Sequoia Capital India's accelerator program), Credit Saison, Speedinvest, S7V, January Capital, and Cambium Grove Capital.

The investor in the previous stage, namely Prasetia Dwidharma, was also involved again in this funding. With this funding, BukuKas has recorded a total of $12 million in funding.

Contacted DailySocial, Co-founder & CEO Krishnan Menon Cashbook admitted that his party is building a service ecosystem that is able to touch various aspects for the convenience of partners merchant they are spread over 700 cities in Indonesia. For now, features or services that are being prepared include services invoice, inventory management, and several other things that suit the needs of SMEs.

"Traders' difficulties are not limited to financial management. We intend to offer more digitization services to merchant by ourselves or through partnerships," Krishnan continued.

Krishnan also said that investors are quite enthusiastic about seeing the huge market opportunity and the experience of investors founder who has been working in the Indonesian market for 8 years. Including the enthusiasm and obsession of the BukuKas team to solve problems faced by SMEs in Indonesia.

Competition Overview

In Indonesia, BukuKas has only been running for 8 months. However according to Krishnan they have managed to reach many cities that are outside tier 1 and includes various types of businesses. This is also proof that the concept of financial management for SMEs such as BukuKas can be very flexible. It is only natural that this potential should be looked at by other players such as BukuWarung and Kasvlo.

BukuWarung recently announced a pre-series A fundraising campaign that led by Quona Capital, even though three months earlier they had just completed the initial stage of funding from East Ventures. Meanwhile, Kasvlo only announced its presence in June.

Responding to this competition, Krishnan is quite optimistic about their experience and knowledge of products and markets in Indonesia.

"Our core strength lies in our knowledge of the merchant, about their pulse and pain points. This is indeed a competitive market but we focus on what we are good at, which is listening to users, focusing on products and techniques, and fast execution. It has shown results so far and we are sure it will continue."

"While the digital financial management ecosystem is and will remain competitive, we also see many opportunities for different players to partner together to better serve users."

Towards its first anniversary, it seems that BukuKas is still ambitious to reach more users and find the best solutions for SME problems.

"Now going through 2020 BukuKas has set their three main focus on improving the experience merchant in using their platform, adding some useful key features, and helping merchants to deal with this pandemic," Krishnan said in an interview last May.