BukuWarung raised seed funding led by East Ventures, to empower 60 million MSMEs in Indonesia

JAKARTA, 7 April 2020 — BukuWarung, an accounting app for MSMEs to digitise their bookkeeping, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by East Ventures. AC Ventures (previously Agaeti Ventures & Convergence Ventures), Golden Gate Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Michael Sampoerna joined the round with strategic angel investors from Grab, Gojek, Flipkart, PayPal, Xendit, Rapyd, Alterra, ZEN Rooms and others.

The company will use the funds to strengthen its market leadership and expand its team to grow further across engineering, product, design, growth and partnerships based out of Jakarta.

BukuWarung was founded in late 2019 by Abhinay Peddisetty and Chinmay Chauhan, both of whom worked together at Carousell. Both founders come with a strong experience of building and scaling product, growth, and revenue teams across early to late stage internet companies like Grab, Carousell, Belong, and Near. Together, they have built payments and financial services for the micro-merchant segment and spent 15 years building for Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

Within a few months of launching, millions of credit and cash transactions have been recorded on the BukuWarung app by over 250,000 MSMEs across more than 500 cities and small towns in Indonesia.

The majority of BukuWarung’s merchants are from tier 2 & 3 cities. Not only are Merchants receiving credit repayments three times faster than the traditional method, they see improved cash-flow due to automated payment reminders sent by the app. Merchants are also able to save on average IDR 110,000 in bookkeeping expenses, as well as several hours typically spent on manual bookkeeping using pen, paper, calculator.

Adjie Purbojati, founder of Lunasbos, has joined BukuWarung as a founding team member to drive growth. Lunasbos is a two-way accounting app and one of the most prominent apps for MSME accounting in Indonesia.

60 million MSMEs

Abhinay Peddisetty, Co-founder of BukuWarung said, “Despite the strong initial traction, we are still less than 1% done as there are over 60 million MSMEs in Indonesia who rely on outdated methods of bookkeeping, or don’t do bookkeeping at all. These merchants have limited visibility into their cash flow or the credit that they give to customers and suppliers.”

“Our mission is to empower these micro-merchants with technology to run their business efficiently. Kasbon (credit) drives up to 80% of their business, which is why we decided to focus on digital bookkeeping as our initial product.”

Read more: Greenly Secured Seed Funding Led by East Ventures

Chinmay Chauhan, Co-founder of BukuWarung added, “having built products for drivers and merchants at Grab and Carousell, we understand that a laser focus on simplicity creates products that drive the most utility for micro-merchants. Over the last 2 months, we saw our engagement increase by 500% because of features we launched.”

“We want to help our merchants reduce contact due to the COVID-19 situation and will be launching features to reduce potential exposure such as sending payment links to their customers to accept payments via major digital wallets and other methods. We’ve also partnered with healthcare startups to create awareness for COVID-19 as safety of users is our #1 priority right now.”

Strong Team

Willson Cuaca, Co-founder and Managing Partner from East Ventures, a highly successful seed investor and venture capital that has backed Tokopedia, Traveloka, Kudo and other prominent startups in Indonesia said, “Due to fast and focused execution by the team, BukuWarung has surged ahead of peers in the market in terms of traction, engagement and quickly become a leader. MSMEs are the backbone of Indonesian economy and we really believe the next wave of innovative startups will come from digitising this segment, so it was an instant fit when we met BukuWarung.”

Vinnie Lauria, Managing Partner at Golden Gate Ventures, that has backed the likes of Carousell, Xendit, Alodokter, Mapan (Ruma) and other prominent startups in SEA said, “I have known Chinmay and Abhinay from their days at Carousell, and they are incredibly strong entrepreneurs with a great pedigree and operating finesse. SaaS will accelerate the evolution of Indonesia’s digital economy, and BukuWarung’s financial tools have the potential to dramatically improve how the country’s 60 million micro-merchants grow their businesses. They have put together a strong local founding team, and I am excited to partner with them.”