Wafa Taftazani's Story Developing Business in Three Startups

Currently the presence of creative businesses is important to encourage innovation, shape culture, and advance economic growth. However, the challenges they still face related to access to finance often hinder their efforts to work.

These creative economies often face unique challenges in obtaining financial support, so it is important to fully understand the financial difficulties they face and explore potential solutions.

Departing from his background, Wafa Taftazani then launch Upbanx, a relevant platform for creative businesses to get access to financing with other Co-founders, namely Hendri Wijaya, and Alif Jafar Fatkhurrohman.

In the discussion together Co-Founder & CEO of KeTitik Bipin Mishra, Wafa revealed a strategy to build a business. The following is a recording of the discussion in full:

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Creative ventures are built on intangible assets (intangible assets) such as intellectual property, brand equity, and creative talent. Valuing these intangible assets becomes very difficult, because the value often exceeds the market value.

Traditional financial institutions such as banks will find it difficult to understand or quantify the intangible assets of creative ventures, resulting in an underestimation of their potential for success.

Upbanx is here to help creative businesses in Indonesia to get access to financing. Currently, the platform is already working with various content creators, ranging from musicians, publishers, to an influencer who has social media accounts on YouTube, Instagram, as well as TikTok.

Utilizing data from the content creator's social media account, Upbanx is able to retrieve data to create credit profiling which is then combined with credit models existing in Upbanx financial partners, such as banking to multifinance.

Currently, Upbank has hundreds of employees with 2 thousand customers, 60% of which are corporate brands and 40% are creators.

"Because traditionally creative businesses in Indonesia cannot get access to financing, because the nature of this business is mostly driven by individual or personal personality compared to products and business models," said Wafa.

Early 2022 Upbanx has earned pre-funding initial with a value of $ 5,2 million or around 74 billion Rupiah with a claim valuation of $ 120 million (centaurs) in just 6 months of operation or 1 month of official standing.

In May 2022, Upbanx also started opening up to the public, after passing stealth mode for nearly a year of operation. The company makes use of the license p2p loans owned by Modal Rakyat to develop a digital banking platform for creators and brands.

Focus on growing business

Apart from Upbanx, Wafa Taftazani also leads several other companies. Among them is his position as Board Member at People's Capital and Co-founder VVCamers. Asked about what Wafa's plans are for the company he currently leads, he emphasized that his focus, along with the other founders, was to increase sustainability and economic units across the firm.

To accelerate the company's growth, fundraising activities will also continue to be carried out. According to Wafa, current conditions are not a reason to postpone the activity. The right step now is to ensure that all companies can continue to grow even without fundraising activities.

Overall, Wafa currently has around 250 employees from the combined companies he leads. Of course, it is supported by the founders who currently number 12 people in each company. According to Wafa the success of a entrepreneur cannot run alone, must be supported by the right partners and of course employees.

"I believe there is none entrepreneur who are successful themselves, judging by the co-founder that supports all businesses. I don't believe an Elon Musk can be successful alone, he probably has a support team that does operational every day. But Elon Musk is a figure that connects all," said Wafa.

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