Indonesia's Fifth Unicorn Startup Is Ovo

Earlier this year, former Ovo Director Johnny Widodo (now become CEO of BeliMobilGue) in an interview with CBNC Indonesia already mentioned the digital payment platform as one that is valued at over $1 billion or what we often know as unicorns. The narrative seems to be muted so that Indonesia currently "officially" still has four unicorns, viz Gojek, Tokopedia, Traveloka, and Bukalapak.

Asian Finance last week, according to the sources he cited, put Ovo's valuation at the time of the last round of funding at $2,9 billion (or more than 40 trillion Rupiah)--a figure that may even have been obsolete today.

In response to this, our source at Ovo does not deny that the company initiated by the Lippo Group and supported by Tokyo Century Corp, Grab, and Tokopedia has indeed reached the unicorn state.

Startup Report 2018 arranged DSResearch placing Ovo as the closest candidate for unicorn status, among the startups with a valuation of over $100 million.

As a company that leading the digital payments industry together with GoPay, this company clearly processes a very large fund turnover that reaches trillions of Rupiah per year. The choice of Ovo as the primary payment option in Tokopedia encourages an increase in the use of this instrument on average for each user.

Last weekend, it was reported that there is potential pairing Ovo and Dana to support businesses dominating the digital payment segment in the face of competition Gojek in Indonesia.

Of course, having a unicorn status doesn't mean you can solve all problems. News downsizing of Bukalapak's employees for reasons of profitability being an example of running a startup, which has growth and profit needs, is not as easy as one might think.