Jakarta, 21 January 2019 – Warung Pintar, a micro retail technology startup company in Indonesia announced that it had secured US$27,5 million in series B funding. Participating in the oversubscribed series B funding round are existing investors including SMDV, Vertex Ventures, Pavilion Capital, Line Ventures, Digital Garage, Agaeti, Triputra, Jerry Ng, and EV Growth, followed by new investor, OVO.

Co-Founder & CEO Warung Pintar, Agung Bezharie Hadinegoro explained that the journey of Warung Pintar in realizing their vision to be the golden standard for micro-entrepreneurs in Indonesia doesn’t stop here. “Warung Pintar has significantly push mitra’s income up to 41%. We will continue to strive in transforming micro-retail so they can have more competitive advantage in the midst of the retail landscape and build a better economy for themselves.”

Many participating investors expressed their excitement towards Warung Pintar’s completion and how the startup’s missions align with their own for Indonesia.

Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures, Chua Kee Lock, explained Warung Pintar immediately touch their attention when they first heard about it. “I believe Warung Pintar is well positioned to accelerate SME digital adoption in Indonesia. Vertex shares the same vision with the management team to empower underserved population and build equal opportunities to everyone. We proud to be part of this venture.”

As for OVO, CEO Jason Thompson, stated “Warung Pintar’s proposition resonates with OVO’s focus to empower Indonesian SMEs and enable micro-entrepreneurs as a critical part of the financial inclusion. This venture underlines OVO’s conviction to be part of Indonesian’s SMEs growth in the digital economy era.”

Jesslyne Widjaja from SMDV also shares her thoughts of how Warung Pintar’s digital transformation is well aligned with the group’s interest in playing a large role to revolutionize Indonesia’s digital economy. “Warung Pintar will reach and transform underserved small business owners without technology capabilities. We believe Warung Pintar is the platform that will empower digital inclusion”, she explained.

Managing Partner EV Growth, Shinichiro Hori expressed, ”We believe that Warung Pintar is very unique in its use of technology to empower millions of micro-entrepreneurs across Indonesia. As EV Growth, we are excited to be part of Warung Pintar and the digital inclusion they are bringing to the underserved population.”

Chairman of Warung Pintar, Willson Cuaca added “We are honored to receive such overwhelming support by ecosystem stakeholders; product principal, local community, government, investors and warung owner. Warung Pintar is one of the fastest growing startups within East Ventures portfolio and the round was close pretty fast. We hope the new round will fuel the growth, adoption and most importantly, make a deep impact on society. “

Since its first inception, Warung Pintar’s kiosks number has grown by 575 times within 12 months. In addition, Warung Pintar has shown to have 110%  of Social Return On Investment, which means every investment that Warung Pintar give to each Mitra will improve their life quality by 110% higher. This is indicated by their capability in providing children’s education, healthcare, socio-economic relationships among each other, the skill of entrepreneurship and other life quality improvement indicators.

“One of the reasons all this growth are possible is because of to the hard work from all Warung Pintar team whom we called AnWar (Anak Warung) – translated to people who like hanging out in Warung. Currently, we have more than 200 AnWar (and growing) with strong drive and passions in building a better economy for Indonesia. Together with Warung Pintar, they continuously leveraging the quality of technologies and services that Warung Pintar can offer,” said Agung.

Starting from 2 kiosks on January 2018, Warung Pintar has more than 1,150 kiosks to date. Last December, Warung Pintar officially extended the business opportunity to the people of Banyuwangi regency (East Java Province in Indonesia) and aiming more than 5,000 kiosks at the end of 2019.

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