Pocket, a family financial management platform startup, raised pre-seed funding led by East Ventures

Pocket, an Indonesia-based fintech startup providing a holistic financial health platform for families, announced the completion of an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding led by East Ventures. Pocket will allocate the fresh funds mainly for product penetration in increasing adoption and users. Pocket will also invest in developing its product and offering to complete the platform ecosystem. 

“We are grateful to receive the trust and support from East Ventures. We believe this funding serves as a strong mover of our vision of democratizing access to digital payment for the younger population and building financial literacy early on. We are confident to provide modern solutions to the current traditional banking landscape, serving as the right solution in closing the gap towards financial inclusion,” said Markus Kevin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Pocket.

Pocket was founded in October 2021 by Markus Kevin (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer) and Bravyto Takwa Pangukir (Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer); where both of them have extensive experience in product management and software engineering. These two co-founders realized at least two longstanding problems in the financial landscape. First, traditional joint banking accounts are not designed to be accessed and personalized independently. Most of the time, they only offer a single debit card, and take a long and complicated process to sign up. Second, children’s access to banking and financial literacy remain stumbling blocks to healthy family finances. In most cases, children do not have access to banking, resulting in many parents needing to give their respective bank accounts or cash to their children without control over their overall spending amount and habits. 

Most parents also have limited awareness of teaching their children to manage their expenses and do budgeting from an early age. It has resulted in an issue that children are only directed to save their pocket money without really understanding the concept of money management and creating good spending habits.

Through Pocket, Markus and Bravyto are solving these pain points. Pocket is a prepaid virtual and physical card with a digital balance capability to help modern parents to manage their family finances. It enables trackable, separable, and completely digital accounts wherein the user can allocate a digital account to every family member for depositing, saving, and spending money. Each digital account is also equipped with secure prepaid virtual and physical cards, supporting the QRIS transactions available at more than 20 million merchants across Indonesia. Family can also manage and personalize the account based on the spending caps/limits with clear visibility through reports and analytics of usage for each individual.

“We strongly believe that technology and financial literacy are among the most important determinants in achieving financial inclusion. We are confident that Pocket is leading the way in opening countless opportunities in empowering parents in Indonesia to educate and prepare the young generation and ultimately enabling modern families with healthy household finances and sustainable financial practices,” said Melisa Irene, Partner at East Ventures.

To date, Pocket has recorded a significant growth of 2.5 times and 3 times month by month in new users and Total Purchasing Value (TPV), respectively. Pocket is also actively cooperating with local banks to complete its ecosystem, collaborating with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, and connecting with more than 100 schools (with the current focus in the Greater Jakarta area) to develop and share content focusing on financial literacy for kids with an overall mission to improve Indonesia’s financial access and literacy. 

Pocket is available for download through Google Play Store and App Store. Pocket is registered and supervised by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and Bank Indonesia.