Sejasa Receives Series A Funding of 56,7 Billion Rupiah Led by Morning Crest Capital and BTFV

Service provider platform Sejasa has successfully secured series A funding of $4 million or IDR 56,7 billion led by Shanghai-based venture capital, Morning Crest Capital (MCC) and Singapore-based BTFV. MCC itself is a major investor in a startup with a similar business model in Australia that has been listed on the local exchange.

This funding has three focuses, namely for the expansion of the Sejasa service area outside Jabodetabek. Furthermore, the company will also use part of the funding to increase technological innovation and increase talent, especially in the product development division. Lastly, the acquisition of service providers and quality maintenance.

Sejasa has provided more than 200 types of services, including home care, home improvement, carpentry services, electronic services, cleaning and disinfectants, to beauty. The company, which was founded in 2015, offers fast, safe, and comfortable household service providers that will arrive at consumers' homes within 45 minutes of ordering.

MCC Managing Partner Fred (Xiaofan) Bai revealed, “We have seen how this platform can be scaled up to cover a wide range of services and even across geographies, and we have confidence in the Recommend Group team to accelerate the digitization of home services across Southeast Asia, which is a huge market opportunity. We continue to be optimistic in digitizing local services globally in the next 5-10 years,"

In addition to document verification, to ensure that the services provided at Sejasa are the best, the company implements a system rating and review so that service providers can better maintain the quality of their services. In addition to going through the curation process, there are several service providers who are recommendations from parties who are experts in their fields.

To be able to convince users more, Sejasa provides a 30-day guarantee and compensation insurance of Rp. 300 million to each customer for every possibility that occurs, such as property damage, theft, fire, and others. In providing this, the company cooperates with insurance service provider Allianz.

To date, the company has worked with more than 40.000 informal SMEs and individual service providers to standardize service coverage and pricing, improve service quality, and enable service providers to collect cashless payments. Previously, Sejasa also worked with Grab to provide "Clean & Fix" service.

Market localization

Sejasa is part of the Recommend Group, which originated in Singapore and also operates in Malaysia under the name Recommend.my. In this regard, Recommend Group Co-Founder & CEO Jes Min Lua revealed that since starting to work in Indonesia in 2008, he has seen tremendous potential in this country. Everyone has the desire to change, adopt new things and take Indonesia to the next stage.

In terms of market localization, his team recognizes that the two markets, Indonesia and Malaysia, tend to have similarities in terms of different market conditions fragmented. There are gap which is quite large among quality service providers with "fake" services. In this case, Sejasa wants to bridge quality service providers, and does not rule out service providers who want to improve quality.

Meanwhile, there are differences but not fundamental in the nature of society in the two countries. For example, most people in Indonesia want a service that can be delivered quickly, while in Malaysia, people tend to plan at least one day before ordering. Therefore, Sejasa strives to provide service providers that are not only good in terms of quality but also geographically to be able to reach people who need services in a fast time.

“We use a matching algorithm to find out what consumers want and use determinants, such as location, job complexity, and schedule to provide the best professional service recommendations,” added Jes.

To date, Sejasa has served more than one million homes in Indonesia and Malaysia. Some platforms that also offer similar services in Indonesia include Seekmi, KliknClean, OKHome, and Adaine.