Sirclo Announces Triawan Munaf and Maurits Lalisang as Commissioners

Startups e-commerce enablers Sirclo announced the appointment of Triawan Munaf and Maurits Lalisang as new commissioners. Both of them will be involved in developing technological capabilities as well as efforts to digitize MSME and corporate businesses in the company.

In his official statement, Sirclo's Founder & CEO Brian Marshal said these two figures have more than three decades of experience in encouraging domestic business progress. With their contribution to the growth of big business in Indonesia, they share the same vision as Sirclo, which is to help business owners make the digital transition to omnichannel.

"We gained a lot of knowledge from these two figures to expand the social and economic impact of Sirclo. We hope to become a sustainable company that is able to form the foundation of Indonesia's digital economy and improve the national economy in the future," said Brian.

For your information, Triawan Munaf has long been known as a national figure and entrepreneur in the creative industry. Previously, Triawan held the position of Head of the Creative Economy Agency (BEKRAF) and President Commissioner of PT Garuda Indonesia Tbk. In February 2020, Triawan joined as Venture Advisor at East Ventures. Recently he was also appointed as President Commissioner and Independent Commissioner of PT Aviasi Tourism Indonesia Tbk.

"The need to carry out digital transformation is increasingly inevitable for businesses at various scales, especially MSMEs which have been the main drivers of the Indonesian economy. I have seen Sirclo's contribution to helping MSMEs so I believe that its capabilities can accelerate MSME growth exponentially," he explained.

Meanwhile, Maurits Lalisang has also had a strong track record in various industrial sectors over the last four decades. Maurits has provided many breakthroughs during a career of more than a decade as CEO and President Commissioner of PT Unilever Tbk. Currently, he serves as President Commissioner of PT Multi Bintang Indonesia Tbk, Commissioner of PT ICI Paints Indonesia, Commissioner of PT Deltomed Laboratories, and Partner of the Saratoga Group.

Since its establishment in 2013, Sirclo offers services enablement in a manner end-to-end to business owners. By 2021, Sirclo has helped more than 100.000 brands to sell online, both from the scale of individual entrepreneurs, MSMEs, to corporations.

Boost MSME expansion

This year, Sirclo intensified various initiatives to boost its business growth. Moreover, Sirclo claims to have reached the profitability stage and is in the momentum to improve the economic unit during the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of them is working on the MSME segment to transform digitally. Some time ago, Sirclo created a program for empowering entrepreneurship mothers to become brand reseller which will be managed with Orami.

Based on data from the Indonesian MSME Association, the pandemic caused the contribution of MSMEs to Indonesia's GDP in 2020 to fall by 37,3%. This contribution decreased significantly compared to the previous year's achievement of 60,3%. Therefore, digitalization is believed to be a key strategy to connect 30 million MSMEs online in 2024.

Sirclo's expansion efforts are also further strengthened with the addition of funding of $36 million or 512 billion Rupiah last September, led by East Ventures and Saratoga, and followed by Traveloka.

According to Brian Marshal, this funding will be used to improve technology capabilities and retail digitalization of various businesses in Indonesia. He sees that the momentum for online shopping in e-commerce is currently at its highest since the pandemic took place.

Some time ago, Sirclo has also launched Sirclo Store, a solution with a concept omnichannel that can help brands sell online on various channels at once, namely websites, marketplace, and conversation-based sales (commerce chat).