Journal of Sealed Seed Funding from East Ventures

Journal cloud-based accounting service published an undisclosed seed funding they've just secured from East Ventures. The funding will go to product and team development. Journal expected that the service would reach 5000 business owners to deal with their accounting matters by the end of this year.

Being founded by Daniel Witono and Anthony Kosasih back in January 2015 in beta version, the Journal has so far served 20 clients, from merchants to importers, restaurant owners, and online sellers. The service is offered for free for the first 90 days, with two subscription options: Starter with IDR 149 thousand per month and Pro with IDR 279 thousand per month.

The journal highlights the issue that almost every SME faces, which is the limited capital they own to hire an accountant and purchase a special accounting software. The journal is expected to facilitate SMEs to hire outsourced accountants and complete them with a cloud-based system that may be accessed from anywhere and at anytime. Journal claimed that its product can be well-accessed using any browser, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet.

Willson Cuaca, East Ventures' Managing Partner, stated in his press release about the investment, “One of Indonesia's key economy growth engine is a small-medium business. With its technology, Jurnal will help and accelerate Indonesia SMB into a new level of efficiency. Daniel and Anthony have shown a strong passion and commitment to make it happens.”

Actually, Jurnal isn't the only one targeting the segment. There is Easy Accounting which gets incubated by Telkom's Indigo Incubator and possesses quite similar services as Jurnal's. Easy Accounting also offers more varied and cheaper monthly subscription options. There is Tax Online as well, which although focuses more on tax calculations, helps users taking care of their accounting stuffs as well.

Those who succeed in this segment are the ones who are able to present the solution of taking notes and reporting, including the creation of a tax report which fits the needs of every business line at most.

Journal's Co-Founder Anthony Kosasih added, “Business owners always want to know their business conditions to create smart decisions, but most of them don't have the time and capability to prepare the required report. Thus, affordable outsourced-accountant and proper software are just the answer to that problematic situation.”