After Y Combinator Demo Day, BukuWarung Gets New Funding to Finalize Monetization Strategy

Micro-entrepreneur cash flow management app developer BookStore, announced the acquisition of further funding for an undisclosed amount. This funding is obtained after they do demo day in a series of Y Combinator accelerator program agenda.

A number of venture capitalists who took part include Partners of DST Global, GMO Venture Partners, Soma Capital, HOF Capital, and VentureSouq.

dozens angel investors also joining this round, including William Hockey (Plaid), Justin Mateen (Tinder), Rahul Vohra (Superhuman), Scott Belsky (CPO Adobe), Josh Buckley, Manik Gupta (ex-CPO Uber), Sriram Krishnan (Spotify), Harry Stebbings (20VC), Nancy Xiao (Bond Capital), Alison Barr Allen (Fast), and other angel investors from WhatsApp, Square, and Airbnb.

Previously in July 2020, BukuWarung was in the middle of completing a pre-series A funding led by Quona Capital. The target is to book funds touching 8-digit dollars. We had confirmed to one of the investors involved in the pre-series A round, they said that the new funding was not linked to this round.

The fresh funds will be used to develop technology and build several financial services. The closest mission, they will integrate the application with payment, credit, and savings products. Cooperation with digital wallet providers such as Ovo and Dana is also encouraged to support payment efficiency.

"We launched a savings and loan pilot and the initial results are very promising, and are in the process of moving towards monetization. The launch of digital payments is a very important first step towards realizing our mission to build digital infrastructure for micro-enterprises in Indonesia, especially when the existing 600 trillion Rupiah is in the ecosystem is still in the form of cash. We also continue to deepen the payment solutions we offer to provide a comprehensive solution to all merchant, for their cash and credit management needs across value chain," said Abhinay Peddisetty, Co-Founder of BukuWarung.

Targeting retailers such as shop owners or small kiosks, the BukuWarung application makes it easy for entrepreneurs to record incoming and outgoing money (profit and loss statements). One of its superior features is also recording and reminding debts for customers/partners. Last August, they also just released a payment feature, allowing merchants to release invoice to distributors or customers. Regarding payment Xendit partnered with strategic partners.

The idea of ​​developing the application started from the findings of founder when observing the operational processes of SMEs in Indonesia. The main challenge faced by micro-entrepreneurs is their dependence on manual accounting and repayment processes. BukuWarung estimates that less than 10 percent of micro-entrepreneurs have used digital tools to manage their business.

Until now, BukuWarung claims to have 1,2 million merchant spread across various parts of Indonesia. It also recorded billions of dollars in gross transactions through the app, bringing the company's growth 100 times since its founding last year.

"Our rapid growth is driven by product strategy and capital efficiency. We create very simple, fast, and easy-to-understand products such as WhatsApp, which is used by almost all MSME players in Indonesia. This makes BukuWarung in demand and used by many merchant new to business online for the first time," said Chinmay Chauhan, Co-Founder of BukuWarung.

In Indonesia, there are already several similar applications. One that is quite prominent in competing is Cash book. They are also currently joining Sequoia India's Surge accelerator program. The service is almost the same, helping micro entrepreneurs record their finances through the application.

In addition, there are actually several services that focus on targeting stalls, for example Payfazz Wahyoo, Ula, WarungPintar, as well as various partnership programs promoted by the giants E-commerce.