Indonesia e-commerce unicorn Bukalapak has received a strategic investment from Mandiri Capital, the venture capital arm of state-owned Indonesian Bank Mandiri. The company also announced that it has received a strategic investment from BRI Ventures, the venture capital arm of yet another state-owned bank, Bank Rakyat Indonesia. The $234 million venture round that was concluded last week was led by Microsoft, Singaporean wealth fund GIC, and Emtek.
“We believe in Bukalapak’s vision in empowering SMEs in Indonesia. This investment is a showcase of Bank Mandiri Group’s intention in strengthening both company’s current strategic partnerships (BukaRumah, BukaReksa, BukaMotor, BukaMobil) and exploring new avenues for Bank Mandiri in providing working capital financing to Indonesian MSMEs,” said Eddi Danusaputro, Chief Executive Officer of Mandiri Capital Indonesia.
The company plans to use its fresh capital to increase its user base of warungs (mom and pop stores), micro, and small businesses in Indonesia. The company’s strategic partnerships with both state-owned banks will also give its user base access to more products and services that the banks offer. In turn, the banks will be able to gain access to Bukalapak’s network of 13.5 million offline partner merchants. Bank Rakyat Indonesia will be able to provide Bukalapak users access to its digital banking and lending products on the e-commerce platform. BRI also plans to offer new products to Bukalapak such as digital lending and savings offerings for business owners.
Bukalapak’s partnership with Mandiri Capital, on the other hand, follows a partnership agreement between Bank Mandiri and Bukalapak to extend financial services through warungs from early 2020. This shows that the state-owned bank plans to foster a closer relationship with the e-commerce unicorn. Bank Mandiri has also already been working with Bukalapak on multiple products such as BukaReksa (mutual fund service), BukaMobil and BukaMotor (auto loan), and BukaRumah (mortgage).
“We are thrilled to be part of Bukalapak’s journey in digitizing small businesses in Indonesia. We hope that this cooperation between Bukalapak and Mandiri Group may provide Indonesian SMEs better access to financial services that will foster inclusiveness in our economy. MCI and Mandiri Group are willing to support every effort in digitizing Indonesian SMEs with all e-commerce and SME enablers in Indonesia,” added Danusaputro.
According to Reuters, the unicorn has also made plans of going public in Jakarta’s stock exchange after hiring Mandiri Sekuritas. Afterwhich, the company may move forward with entering a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to release a US IPO.
Matured Southeast Asian tech startups have all been racing towards going public. Aside from Bukalapak, companies such as Gojek and Tokopedia have also expressed intentions of going public locally and in the US, according to Reuters. Earlier this week, Grab also announced SPAC partnership with Altimeter Growth to go public in the US with a valuation of $39.6 billion.
Featured image credits: Unsplash