Sirclo Officially Announces Continued Funding Worth 512 Billion Rupiah

After the news about additional funding round, Sirclo today (10/9) officially announced the acquisition of funding worth $36 million or equivalent to 512 billion Rupiah led by East Ventures and Saratoga. Another investor involved is Traveloka.

In its official release, it is stated that this funding will be used to develop the technological capabilities offered and to accelerate retail digitalization for various businesses in Indonesia. During the pandemic, the company admitted that it was gaining momentum to improve its economic unit and was already at the profitability stage.

"With this injection of funds, we plan to build the momentum of high consumer interest in shopping on the channel E-commerce during the pandemic and beyond. Sirclo continues to stick to the mission to help brands selling online through approach omnichannel," said Sirclo Founder & CEO Brian Marshal.

Previously, platform e-commerce enablers it has developed a SaaS solution Sirclo Store with approach omnichannel aimed at helping brand selling online through various channels at once, such as websites, marketplace, and conversation-based sales (commerce chat).

In addition, in a series of initiatives Online-to-Offline (O2O), the platform which recently launched the #MerdekaJualanOnline program in the country's national economic recovery program, is also developing financial solutions aimed at supporting MSME players to compete with larger retail players.

East Ventures Co-Founder & Managing Partner Wilson Weather ranks Sirclo as a classic example of a startup running a marathon. As an investor, East Ventures felt that Sirclo was a bit too fast market-timing when it was founded in 2013. However, the consistent focus of the founder's vision from the start has allowed Sirclo to survive and grow over the years.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the strengthening of the company's business, Sirclo recorded the highest revenue in the company's history, with a nominal value of hundreds of millions of dollars, and is approaching the profitable. We are thrilled to be a part of their journey, and to re-participate in this funding phase,” continued Willson.

Throughout the pandemic, Sirclo itself recorded a 5x increase in transactions driven by changes in consumer behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, Sirclo has helped more than 100.000 brand to sell online, both from the scale of individual entrepreneurs, MSMEs, to large companies.

Performance e-commerce enablers in times of pandemic

The e-commerce industry in Indonesia has grown rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly half of Indonesia's population uses digital technology for their daily needs, making this industry high potential for growth. Service presence e-commerce enablersaims to facilitate brand principal enter the realm online. Through a single dashboard, they can manage their product presence across multiple services online marketplace at a time.

In Indonesia, it is not only Sirclo who is trying to take on the role of e-commerce enablers, there are several players who are also competing to enliven this market. One of which is JetCommerce. Through the solution, they claim to have managed to record an increase in transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020 as a whole by 36% from the previous quarter, reaching more than 750 thousand transactions on various platforms. marketplace in early 2021. The company also has rapidly growing business units in China, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Among the players who were already present, the solution provider e-commerce enablers based cloud from Singapore, Genie tries to enliven the competition by doing expansion to the Indonesian market. This platform claims to have regional integration Back-end with maker E-commerce websites like Shopify and WooCommerce, reducing the hassle for merchants when they set up an online store.

Report Digital Market Outlook published by Statista mentions that users E-commerce in Indonesia this year is predicted to grow 15% from a total of 138 million users in 2020, or reach 159 million users in 2021. Meanwhile, industry revenue is predicted to increase by 26% to reach $38 million, from $30 million in 2020.