Unicorn startups Akulaku Continue to Expand the Coverage of Financial Business

Akulaku announced funding of $10 million or the equivalent of 143 billion Rupiah from Lend East. shape investment debt funding it will be utilized Akulaku to increase their loan portfolio in their main markets, namely Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. As is known, since its establishment in 2014 the application Akulaku own product offering paylater and cashloan for its consumers.

Previous Akulaku new received $100 million equity funding or more than Rp1,4 trillion from Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). This acquisition continues the previous year's $125 million investment round led by the Silverhorn Group, which is also a financing partner (financing partners) since 2018. In total, current valuation Akulaku already crossed $1 billion and made it as a startup unicorn next.

“Since last year Akulaku continues to grow and this additional funding will allow us to continue to meet demand underbanked across Southeast Asia,” said the CEO Akulaku William Li.

Continue to diversify your financial business

In 2021, Akulaku has disbursed more than $2,2 billion in credit to more than 10 million users. Apart from service paylater, Akulaku combine platforms wealth management, e-commerce, and digital banking, thereby increasing the company's total revenue by 120% to $598 million.

For digital banking services, Akulaku choose acquired 24,98% stake in Bank Neo Commerce (majority). A number of plans have also been intensified from this collaboration, one of which is through loans origination system, namely a system for processing credit approvals, in particular for direct loans/online financing.

Other than that, Akulaku also developed a series of technologies to increase banking capabilities in entering the digital era, some of the products offered included e-KYC, verification systems, to QR payment services.

As for loan services, they rely on the platform my assets. To date, the total loans that have been rolled out have reached 42 trillion Rupiah with a total borrower of 13 thousand customers. And on the platform wealth management, they developed OneAset, a financial application that users can use to manage their financial assets, including investing in mutual funds, securities, and gold.

Market competition

In Indonesia, all lines of business Akulaku have to compete with other players. For example for payalter, current existing Kredivo, Atome, to GopayLater who became the challenger. Each also has great support from its parent – ​​including for the potential to dominate the Southeast Asian market, such as FinAccel, Advance Intelligence Group, and GoTo.

Meanwhile in digital bank Even now, competition continues to be enlivened by product innovation from players in the ecosystem. There are dozens of digital banks that are already on the air and ready to make their debut. And to wealth management, dozens of similar applications have also been peddled for retail investors in Indonesia.

Regardless of the diversification of financial products that are trying to be presented, players like Akulaku actually has a strategic advantage that can be explored, namely connectivity in its digital ecosystem. In fact, many other players synergize with third parties to bring certain capabilities – take the example of Bank Jago with Seeds/Stockbit for investment features – which Neo Commerce and OneAset can also do; or applied to other business model scenarios.