JAKARTA, 7 AUGUST 2018 —  Earlier today, retail technology company Warung Pintar announced that it has secured another $4 million funding round from Vertex Ventures, Pavilion Capital, and LINE Ventures. The investment will accelerate Warung Pintar’s mission to help to improve the quality of warung (traditional kiosks) in Jakarta and to encourage technology inclusion for micro-enterprises.

Since its initial funding 6 months ago, Warung Pintar’s kiosk base has grown rapidly by 3477%  with an average monthly growth of 187%. Today, Warung Pintar have 319 kiosks across Jabodetabek that are operated by more than 500 micro-entrepreneurs. Several programs and collaborations were also established to boost Warung Pintar’s growth and promote digital financing to kiosk owners, including the recent one with Go-jek’s payment arm Go-Pay, which allows shops’ customer to do cashless payment in all kiosk.

Currently, there are more than 12.000 registered potential Warung Pintar’s Partners waiting to join Warung Pintar, showing the great enthusiasm from society towards new opportunities given by Warung Pintar.

Improving kiosk’s owner welfare with technology

Technology development also continues to be done to improve the welfare of Warung Pintar’s partners. Sofian Hadiwijaya, CTO of Warung Pintar shares that technology has been proven to increase the operational efficiency of kiosks, which then increase their sales and income. According to the data, the average kiosk owner’s monthly income has increased by 89.5% after joining Warung Pintar and can reach up to. IDR 4.17 million – 15% higher than Jabodetabek area minimum wages.

“We keep innovating and listening to what our customers and kiosk partners need so that the technology is accessible and easily used by all kinds of community. We are trying to solve hyper-local problems that these warungs have on their daily basis with the state-of-the-art technology and global knowledge of the product. Therefore we’re building a team of engineers with strong technical understanding and a big heart for Indonesians grassroots”, he explained.

Willson Cuaca, Managing Partner of East Ventures and Chairman of Warung Pintar said, “Warung Pintar was literally born out of problems that laid before our own eyes but went unnoticed. We are confident and excited to bring financial inclusion to the unbanked population by giving them financial strength and additional income, not by lending them money like what has been trending recently.”

Joo Hock Chua, Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures said, “SMEs have always been a major contributor to the economy in Southeast Asia and they account for over 90% of all business establishments. Most SMEs still do business the traditional way.  Vertex Ventures is happy to be part of Warung Pintar to help upgrade SMEs in Indonesia and enable them to participate in the digital economy to earn more income and improve their living standard”.

###

About Warung Pintar

Warung Pintar is a prefabricated kiosk with technology integration for Indonesian mom and pop shop. It aims to enable digitalization on a grassroots level so that Indonesia’s mass population may receive access to economic inclusion and social security. It looks to open new windows of opportunity for behavior analysis, community engagement, and impact monitoring. Warung Pintar is Indonesia answer for new retail.

www.warungpintar.co