Indonesia-based digital trust startup Privy announced Tuesday it has raised $17.5 million from a Series B financing round led by GGV Capital.
The round was also participated in by Endeavor Catalyst, Buana Sejahtera Group, and most of Privy’s previous investors, namely, MDI Ventures, Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi, Mandiri Capital, and Gunung Sewu Group.
Privy said in a statement that it plans to use the fresh funds to expand its information technology (IT) and security infrastructure, which is currently hosting the digital identity and digitally signed documents of thousands of enterprises, including multinational institutions like Zurich, Manulife, ISS, WWF, Kelly Services, and Phillip Morris.
Privy projected that its daily transactions will dramatically increase from 100,000 per day to 800,000 per day in just two years.
Privy has been at the forefront of Indonesia’s digital transformation, bridging the digital trust gap by providing trusted digital identity and legally binding digital signature.
Within five years, Privy has been enabling 18.5 million users to open bank saving accounts, stock trading accounts, apply for credit cards, insurance policy, lease a motor vehicle, submit invoice financing, take loans from fintech lending companies, sign rental contracts, and accept job offers without the need to travel and sign on hardcopy documents.
Privy has experienced exponential growth in the past few years, especially with the massive increase in digitalization led by the pandemic.
Since 2017, its Enterprise customers grew 17.5 times, its individual users grew by 30 times, and the number of signed documents grew by 58 times.
The company is addressing a very huge market opportunity as according to Statista, the global digital identity solution market is projected to grow to $49.5 billion in 2026 from $23.3 billion in 2020.
The rapid market growth is driven by increasing instances of identity frauds, data breaches, and new government regulations.
In 2021, Privy has also received the highest recognition–from the Ministry of Communication and Informatics of the Republic of Indonesia as a CA rooting to Indonesian national root CA, thereby increasing the trust from various major corporations in Indonesia.
“Privy has one of the strongest founder-market fits in the digital identity and access management space, with the core founding team having more than 30 years of combined experience in law, RegTech, FinTech, and cyber security, including white-hat hacking. The team’s focus on product, privacy, and security provides a strong foundation for the future growth of the company,” said Jenny Lee, a Managing Partner at GGV Capital, a global VC that backed IDWall in LatAm and Authing in China.
“From our experience of investing in large emerging markets across the past 20 years, we learned that highly-localized grassroots founders who are fighting in the trenches with their team cater especially well to the pick-and-shovel layer of the internet business. Our partnership with Privy is underpinned by our commitment to team up with local founders who show real passion and grit in solving the fundamental challenges of our time – increasing access to digital services is one of them. For example, by leveraging technology to provide services such as eKYC, Privy can simplify the credit application and onboarding process for the mass market and drive penetration in other consumer internet verticals,” she added.
Meanwhile, Telkom’s Director of Digital Business and MDI Ventures’ President Commissioner Fajrin Rasyid said, TelkomGroup has strongly believed in Privy since the beginning of its journey. “We are committed to providing Privy our support to help them enable Indonesians to do the digital signature securely and conveniently, just like our mission to digitalize Indonesia,” he said.
Being the first and only digital signature player who passed the Central Bank’s (BI) Regulatory Sandbox, Privy has acquired the nation’s largest banks such as BRI, Mandiri, CIMB Niaga, BNI, Danamon, Nobu Bank, and Panin Bank as its customers.
As part of its global expansion strategy, Privy also re-branded its business name, from PrivyID to Privy. The new brand keeps privacy at the heart of the company while setting its course to grow the business beyond what it is today.
This year, Privy also expanded its digital signature business into European Union countries by partnering with Zettabyte, a higher education SaaS provider.
Privy is envisioned to be the enabler of access to the emerging digital economy, it constantly innovates around digital trust as its foundation.
“Even the most widely used products might only last for decades, they are being replaced by more technologically advanced products and the pace of such cycles is getting much shorter and shorter every year. At Privy, we are not just selling products, we want people to feel as a part of a culture to reimagine what’s possible and get out of our comfort zone, to inspire people to redesign the way we do things, the way we live,” said Privy Chief Executive Officer Marshall Pribadi.