Sisian Announces 71 Billion Rupiah Series A Funding

Side announced that it has closed its series A funding of $5 million or equivalent to 71 billion Rupiah. This round was led by Altara Ventures, with the participation of Access Ventures, XA Network, iSeed SEA, as well as two investors in the previous round namely Golden Gate Ventures and Antler. So far, the startup founded by Wisnu Nugrahadi, Margana Mohamad, and Dimas Pramudya has managed to raise funds of up to $7,1 million.

The fresh funds will be focused on strengthening the technology, product and sales teams. Since launching in 2019, they have served around 150 corporate clients with 850 thousand workers. Its services allow business partners to connect with workers "blue collar" to perform various types of work, such as making sales, creating product reviews, conducting surveys, installing applications, etc.

In Indonesia, currently there are several special platforms targeting blue-collar workers (informal workers). In general, it consists of two forms, the first is job marketplace allows companies to find job candidates with a more formal recruitment process. Temporary agency service usually presenting certain jobs on the platform, then registered workers can pick up and work on those tasks directly, and get commissions after successful submissions.

The presence of these services is based on the existence of a fairly large market niche. Based on BPS data, as of 2019 these workers dominated the informal sector with a figure of 57,27%. Side internal data even recorded an increase during the pandemic. During March to December 2020, the number of downloads of the Siden application increased 4x, exceeding 1 million downloads. The number of partners also increased significantly during this period, although the number was not stated.

Previously in a joint interview DailySocial and also to founder said Side development was inspired by the business model outsourcing who impose daily or monthly targets on workers. In the process of working, Sampingan uses an approach similar to that model, providing pay based on performance results (pay per performance).

The sideline was born from the Antler generator startup program batch first in Singapore. Last year 2020, the program finally stop in Indonesia to provide mentorship and investment programs to candidates founder. In addition to Side, there are local startups born thanks to the program, including: Bubays and Cooklab.