Pintarnya closes Seed fundraise at US$ 14.3 million; East Ventures and Vertex Ventures SEA & India join the round

Pintarnya, one-stop digital platform for blue-collar workers to find employment opportunities in Indonesia, announced it has raised US$ 8 million from East Ventures and Vertex Ventures SEA & India (VVSEAI), bringing the total seed funding to US$ 14.3 million, one of the largest seed funding rounds in Southeast Asia to-date. Launched in May 2022, the company was founded by three senior executives Nelly Nurmalasari, Henry Hendrawan and Ghirish Pokardas. Pintarnya helps Indonesia’s rising working class get employed, become more employable and access better financial services. Since its launch, Pintarnya has connected more than 6,000 employers with more than 100,000 job seekers looking for opportunities in the F&B, Retail, Logistics and Hospitality sectors. The company previously raised US$6.3 million from General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital India and prominent angels in May 2022. 

“There is a huge opportunity in empowering millions of the region’s blue collar workers in their quest to get better employment and livelihood. The opportunity comes with a lot of difficult pain points along the user journey but we believe Pintarnya is the right team that can crack this problem. They have the proven experience of building and scaling B2C marketplace and financial service products in Indonesia. They are making fast progress and we are looking forward to further excitement by the team,” said Willson Cuaca, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures who will also be joining Pintarnya as Board member.

Joo Hock Chua, Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India, added, “The current practices for grey collar workers to find jobs and for employers to hire the right workers in Indonesia are rather inefficient and can even be considered antiquated. Pintarnya is solving these problems using technology and data to enable significantly more efficient and cost effective job searching and hiring. We are excited to partner this outstanding team of Nelly, Henry and Ghirish to help the working class to find employment and access to financial services not previously available to them.” 

“We want to thank East Ventures and Vertex Ventures SEA & India for their strong vote of confidence and we are thrilled to have them join our mission. Several sectors have seen exponential growth in Indonesia post-COVID, resulting in a huge opportunity for both job seekers and employers. We are keen to be the platform of choice that facilitates supply-demand matching for both sides and provides access to better financial services to blue collar workers through better digital identity and verifiable employment history,” Henry Hendrawan, Co-Founder of Pintarnya, added.

Henry further adds, “With this new funding, we will grow our ecosystem of job seekers and employers across different cities in Indonesia. We will further invest in technology and data capability as our key value-add to facilitate an efficient job search process for both candidates and employers.” The company is expanding its team and actively seeking engineers, product managers, designers, marketers, operations and business development professionals based in Jakarta.