LinkAja Announces Acquisition of iGrow

LinkAja today (29/4) announced its acquisition of iGrow, a startup p2p loans focusing on productive financing in agriculture. In his statement, it was stated that this corporate action was aimed at expanding the line of business LinkAja to financing online, especially for the MSME productive sector. This is in line with LinkAja's goal to encourage financial inclusion and improve the welfare of the Indonesian people through economic independence.

This effort was made after previously LinkAja managed to book series B funding of more than $100 million -- including from Grab and Gojek. While iGrow previously received support from a number of inside investors initial funding round, including from 500 Startups, East Ventures, Rekanext, and for their participation in the Google Launchpad Accelerator program.

In his remarks, LinkAja CEO Haryati Lawidjaja said, "The expansion of the business line in the financing sector is LinkAja's real step in providing easy access to finance and the economy, especially for the lower middle class and MSMEs [...] Supported by a strong LinkAja ecosystem network in various sectors. areas outside Java and cities tier-2 and 3, LinkAja hopes to provide equitable access to financing for MSME actors, which so far are still focused on the island of Java and cities. tier-1."

Meanwhile, in his remarks, iGrow Chief Business Development Jim Oklahoma said, "We are very pleased to be able to collaborate with LinkAja as a national electronic money service provider that has the same goals as iGrow [..] LinkAja is a company that has strong business fundamentals with shareholder collaboration between SOEs and big technology companies. This will accelerate iGrow's vision and mission to have an impact on MSMEs and can make iGrow one of the main players in the financing sector for the productive sector."

Besides Jim, iGrow was also founded by Andreas Senjaya (CEO) since 2014. At first their platform was designed to make it easier for people to invest in agricultural productive land, at that time the schematic is more similar through crowdfunding – although the company does not claim to be a crowdfunding platform. But as its development, iGrow transformed into p2p loans so that it can raise funds (from retail and institutional lenders) and more flexible distribution.

This is the first acquisition for LinkAja. It will be interesting to watch the company's next steps, considering that currently the electronic money platform already has a large enough capital capital, supported by various strategic digital players. Of course the expansion of the ecosystem will be the focus.