Mandiri Capital Indonesia Again Participates in Crowde's Series B Funding Round

The CVC managed by Bank Mandiri, Mandiri Capital Indonesia (MCI), again participated in the Series B Crowde funding round. Based on the sources we obtained, in the latest round of startups for agriculture it also involves Monk's Hill Ventures.

Interestingly, this funding also involves the business units of the Gunung Sewu Group conglomerate subsidiary, namely PT Great Giant Pineapple (GGP) which is a subsidiary of Great Giant Foods (GGF). A little information, GGP is the largest pineapple canner producer in the world which has exported more than 15.000 containers to 60 countries.

This funding news has been confirmed by MCI CEO Eddi Danusaputro. "That's right, we did Followingfunding series B to Crowde," he said in a text message to DailySocial.id.

According to data submitted to regulators, in the ongoing round, the company has raised fresh funds of $9 million or around 127,2 billion Rupiah.

Previously, MCI had participated by leading Crowde's pre-series A funding of $1 million or around 14 billion Rupiah in 2019. On the same occasion, Bank Mandiri also participated as Actioncalendar institutions for distributing credit via Crowde amounting to 100 billion Rupiah.

Currently, Crowde has disbursed loans ranging from IDR 8 million to IDR 2 billion with an interest rate of 6% -18%. Crowde also recorded a TKB90 of 97,89%. Apart from Bank Mandiri, Crowde has also collaborated with Actioncalendar other institutions, namely Bank BJB, BPR Supra, and Saison Indonesia to strengthen their credit distribution structure.

Great potential, but risky

In the report DSResearch with Crowde entitled "Driving the Growth of Agriculture-Technology Ecosystem in Indonesia", the cultivation sector is included in the business sector which has quite high risk. The reason is that business development in this sector is hampered by a number of obstacles, such as access to capital, financial literacy, as well as the cultivation abilities and knowledge of farmers.

According to reports, the low educational background and financial literacy of farmers is one of the factors inhibiting cultivation businesses. Crowde said that 78% of active household farmers in Indonesia do not meet bank capital requirements.

Apart from that, internet penetration among farmers is still low. Based on BPS data in 2018, only 4,5 million farmers were connected to the internet out of a total of 27 million business actors in agriculture.