1. Startups

Strengthening the Wealthtech Line, Parent Shopee Acquires a Securities Company

Sea Group acquired PT Yuanta Asset Management; now rebranded to PT Sea Aset Manajemen

Sea Group shows its seriousness to work on this line of business wealthtech  by acquiring securities company PT Yuanta Asset Management, through its business partner, Andy Indigo. Yuanta Asset Management is now officially registered with the OJK under the name PT Sea Aset Manajemen.

This is not the first initiative by Sea Group to enter the realm of investment management. Previously, Sea Group's subsidiary, Shopee had cooperate with startups wealthtech Seeds to provide Mutual Fund Investment and Smart Investment features in its platform. This collaboration is expected to facilitate access for Shopee users to enter the capital market.

Apart from that, the company also worked with Pegadaian to present Gold Savings in the Shopee application. This service allows all levels of society registered in the Shopee application to start investing in gold with only IDR 500, buying and transferring gold to fellow users.

The various initiatives launched related to investment management show the company's response to the increasing investment interest of the Indonesian people. The total number of investors in the Indonesian capital market as of December 28 2022 has increased by 37,5 percent to 10,3 million investors from the previous 7,48 million investors at the end of December 2021.

Millennial customers are believed to be the main catalyst in the business growth of startup companies in the field of investment management technology. According to Databoks Indonesia, most capital market investors are from the millennial generation who are under 30 years old. Even so, the value of its assets is considered the lowest among other age groups.

In addition, the convenience created has increasingly attracted the interest of various walks of life to start investing. No wonder many companies are considering entering the realm wealthtech. In Indonesia alone, there are around 96 companies that have been registered with the OJK as investment managers as of January 2023.

Regarding business development, Sea Group has recently taken efficiency measures. This was contained in an internal memo from Sea Forrest founder Li announcing that the company "needs to focus on profitability after a difficult 2022", adding that the economy in 2023 "may prove more challenging" amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and increasing inflation rate.

Thus, the company has also decided to stop raising salaries for employees who have not been promoted. Li also added that most of the changes have been made. Sea also laid off more than 7.000 employees or about 10 percent of its workforce in December last year.

This efficiency measure was also carried out for Garena in September 2022, including the closing of several large projects to increase Sea's profitability. In the same month, more Shopee employees were also laid off, with several of their job offers rescinding days before they started work.

Securities acquisition trends

Acquisitions of securities and asset management companies in Indonesia are increasingly busy. In 2022, there were two startup companies in the financial sector or fintech which is aggressively expanding by acquiring securities companies to banks. This acquisition trend is increasingly enlivening the digital financial ecosystem by startup companies fintech.

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One of them is Stockbit which has completed the process acquisition of PT Mahakarya Artha Sekuritas in early 2022. Previously, features trading shares in Stockbit had stopped because the company's partnership with Sinarmas Sekuritas had ended on August 6, 2021.

Previous, the Ajaib investment platform has also carried out a similar initiative by acquiring shares of PT Primasia Unggul Sekuritas. In a previous report, Anna Lora, Director of Stock Brokerage for Ajaib Sekuritas, said that this acquisition was aimed at making it easier for Ajaib to develop more products in the future.

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