A busy bee
- 500-backed BukuKas, a startup focused on digitizing Indonesia’s small businesses, has raised US$50 million in Series B funding. This news comes after its US$10 million Series A funding four months ago.
- The startup will use its Series B to hire for its engineering and product teams in Jakarta and Bangalore, and launch new services for merchants.
- According to the startup, the platform has signed up about 6.3 million businesses so far. It now has a total of 3 million monthly active users. It also said its annualized bookkeeping transaction volume is US$25.9 billion.
- The startup has been busy working towards serving 20 million SMEs by the end of 2022. This year, it launched BukuKasPay for business owners to pay suppliers online or accept digital payments.
- In September 2020, it acquired a digital ledger app. It then launched an e-commerce platform called Tokko that enables MSMEs to set up online shops. About 1.3 million merchants have created shops since its release six months ago.
- Read the full story on TechCrunch here.
The price is right
- 500-backed price comparison and product aggregating platform iPrice Group announced it has raised US$1.5 million in funding from South Korean foodtech company Woowa Brothers. Its last funding round was a US$10 million Series B in March 2020.
- According to its media release, the startup aims to bring a greater level of transparency, convenience, and trust to consumers in SEA. Instead of going through multiple marketplaces, users can access six billion offers from more than two million sellers on a single platform.
- “Consumers increasingly expect shopping experiences embedded in their phones — be it in various apps or even in the native camera apps for visual shopping. We, therefore, built a product to bring e-commerce to those places, becoming the prime partner for leading platforms and super apps in the region,” iPrice Group CEO Paul Brown-Kenyon said.
- Read the full story on e27 here.
Double feature
- Two 500-backed startups have come together in a partnership — online marketplace Bukalapak and fintech platform Kredivo.
- Together, they launched Bukalapak Paylater, a ‘buy now, pay later’ solution with 0% interest rate exclusively for Bukalapak users.
- This collaboration marks a new milestone for both startups. This is the first such feature for Bukalapak, while it is Kredivo’s first time providing a white label ‘pay later’ service to a partner.
- Bukalapak users qualify for a credit limit of up to ~US$34 to shop at Bukalapak.
- Read more about the partnership here.
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500 Startups is a venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems. In Southeast Asia, 500 Startups invests through the pioneering 500 Southeast Asia family of funds. The 500 Southeast Asia funds have backed over 240 companies across multiple sectors from internet to consumer to deep technology. It continues to connect founders with capital, expertise and powerful regional and global networks to help them succeed.
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