Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Lummo, previously known as BukuKas, has announced that it has raised US$80 million in its Series C round of funding led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India.
Other global tech and e-commerce investors such as CapitalG, the independent growth fund of Google parent company Alphabet; NuvemShop CEO Santiago Sosa; and former Lazada CEO Max Bittner; also participated in this round.
In addition, Lummo’s flagship product, TOKKO, has been rebranded to LummoSHOP as it cements its status as a leading software solution for entrepreneurs and brands in unlocking and maximizing their business potential through online commerce.
The name Lummo is derived from lumen, the Latin word for light, reflecting the company's ambition to shine the spotlight on entrepreneurs and brands, enabling them to discover all possibilities to grow their business through its D2C SaaS stack.
“We are delighted to welcome our new investors to support Lummo’s journey to digitize and accelerate the growth of MSMEs,” said Krishnan Menon, CEO and founder of Lummo. “The backing we’ve secured shows the confidence investors have in our team and product to become the preferred partner to merchants and MSMEs, as well as their conviction in the region’s rapidly growing digital economy. We offer entrepreneurs and brands the opportunity to sell directly to their customers, and enable them to build a strong and distinctive brand online using LummoSHOP.”
“We believe that the D2C [direct-to-consumer] approach enabled by our SaaS stack will help merchants and MSMEs in establishing strong relationships with their customers and help them face the intense competition in the online market today. LummoSHOP will empower them to be strong businesses and at the same time remain customer-focused, which in turn will help manage their customer base and increase repeat business,” Krishnan concluded.
“We are thrilled to be a part of Lummo’s mission to empower aspiring entrepreneurs and brands to accelerate their growth and to serve their customers by giving them the best technology and partner solutions. Digital-led economic growth, especially in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, is a key investment focus for us. We have seen Lummo’s rapid growth over the past two years, and are proud to see the company’s continuous improvement and innovation to enable MSMEs to grow in online commerce. We look forward to supporting Lummo’s journey as it enters its next growth phase,” John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global added.
Lummo was launched in December 2019 as BukuKas, a bookkeeping app for MSMEs, with the objective of empowering and digitizing them. It later expanded its business in November 2020 by launching TOKKO, an online D2C commerce builder.
Uplifting entrepreneurs and brands to reach their potential
According to the Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministry, Indonesia is home to 64.2 million MSMEs but only 23.9 percent of them are digitalized. For the ASEAN region itself, MSMEs accounted for an average 97.2 percent of all enterprises during 2010–2019.
During his keynote speech at Lummo’s brand launch, Cooperatives and SMEs Minister Teten Masduki, highlighted the potential of Indonesia’s digital economy. According to data from Google and Temasek, Indonesia’s digital economy is projected to be worth Rp 1,700 trillion by 2025, while MSME e-commerce transactions contributed Rp 186.8 trillion in the first half of 2021.
“I would like to congratulate TOKKO for its rebranding into LummoSHOP, which aims to create a more dynamic brand through the power of innovation. Hopefully, this new identity can become a new energy in an effort to advance MSMEs and entrepreneurs in Indonesia. I believe that Lummo can support market expansion and financial inclusion for MSMEs, especially in the digitalization era we are currently facing," he said.
Teten also noted that the expansion of digital and financial literacy for MSME players had an important role in accelerating this growth.
"This is where we think LummoSHOP can play a role," he said, highlighting LummoSHOP’s feature of providing an official website that can be managed independently by MSMEs. This, he continued, certainly offered its own advantages by providing an alternative to selling online for MSME players through a D2C technology approach, providing a new strategy in marketing MSME products that prioritizes customer focus or customer orientation.
In the challenging e-commerce environment, entrepreneurs have embraced the company’s software solutions to better manage their businesses. This is evidenced by TOKKO’s (now LummoSHOP) gross merchandise value (GMV), which grew by 11 times from December 2020 to December 2021.
Recently, TOKKO also won the Google Play Users’ Choice Award 2021 in the “preferred application by users” category, proving that TOKKO’s solutions to help entrepreneurs grow their business have been well received by users. While rebranding to LummoSHOP, the company will double down on these efforts to help its merchants be successful through D2C online commerce.
To strengthen its commitment to the digitalization of local MSMEs and entrepreneurs, the company also launched TOKKO Semesta - a community program for entrepreneurs aimed at providing assistance, training and mentorship. Entrepreneurs can join TOKKO Semesta both online and offline for a hyper-personalized mentorship program customized to the entrepreneur’s business scale and needs.
Along with the rebranding to LummoSHOP, the company aims to strengthen its D2C product offerings through technological innovations like chat commerce, catalog integration, custom domains, multiple platform management, personalized features for branding and many more innovations in the pipeline.
LummoSHOP’s D2C model ensures a stronger relationship between the brands and the customer with no third party sitting in the middle. The solution will allow entrepreneurs and brands to access their customers’ records, purchase history, as well as other analytics - all of which are crucial for building and growing an engaged customer base.
With the multiple platform management feature, entrepreneurs and brands will be able to use LummoSHOP to manage all their customer orders from multiple shopping platforms, making LummoSHOP the one place from where they can manage all their online commerce operations. LummoSHOP will also help entrepreneurs and brands to create their own official customized website, giving them the power to build their own unique brand and identity.
Shining the spotlight for entrepreneurs and brands with the best technology and partner solutions
While LummoSHOP’s reputation among entrepreneurs and brands has certainly benefited from the Google Play award, its rapid adoption may very well come from personal recommendations and word-of-mouth.
Just ask Fitria, the proprietor of the brand PAV Food, based in Bandung, West Java. Since 2015, PAV Food has been offering customers a wide range of culinary delights with a local twist - from freshly made pizzas and crispy cassava chips to refreshing ginger drinks.
In an interview with The Jakarta Post, Fitria said that she joined what was then LummoSHOP when it was first launched in 2020. Back then, she recalled, she utilised LummoSHOP’s features to keep a catalog of her products.
“I’m not the type of person to wait and watch. Whenever there is something new that I think can benefit my business, then I’ll readily sign up for it,” she said.
Fitria first came across LummoSHOP (previously TOKKO, when it was first launched in 2020) from another entrepreneurs who sold their wares through LummoSHOP. After browsing through, she then decided to join the app while noting that the process was simple and free of charge.
During the early days, Fitria used LummoSHOP purely as an online catalog, encouraging her clients to see her products through her own website built using LummoSHOP. Over time, new features allowed her to better synchronize products across ecommerce platforms, while a personalized mentoring program from the LummoSHOP team provided her with tips on how to use LummoSHOP more effectively. Aside from the user-friendly approach and e-commerce integrations, Fitria said that one of the major benefits of LummoSHOP is the ability to save a database of her customers, something she said is unique to LummoSHOP.
“I find the customer database feature very useful as I can quickly share promos or other notices directly to the saved contacts. I haven’t seen this feature in other platforms where I would have to manually save the customer contact information. With this feature, LummoSHOP helps me connect directly to my customers. End of the day, when I serve my customers better, I create a loyal and happy group of customers and that’s exactly what LummoSHOP helps me to do.” she explained.
“As the MSME coordinator of Bandung, I also want other entrepreneurs to be able to grow as well. So, I encourage them to join LummoSHOP just like how I joined seeing other entrepreneurs, I feel they will find it as useful as I have.” “I want my business to be sustainable, amid the intense competition in the online market today. I believe that by using LummoSHOP, I can get the best technology and partner solutions to manage my business better,” Fitria concluded.
With the new look, LummoSHOP hopes to become the best solutions of entrepreneurs, like Fitria and countless others, by shining the spotlight on them to help them discover all possibilities to grow their business.
