Cofounder and COO Iwan Kurniawan said that Modalku aimed to reach “tens of thousands” of online sellers but would remain selective in the industries it chose to fund.

“We want to support SMEs that have recently gone online or whose online businesses have grown during the pandemic,” he said during a press briefing on Wednesday. “We see an opportunity to fund online SMEs such as those in the health sector, fast-moving consumer goods and ICT [information and communications technology].”

The company’s recent survey of 200 SMEs showed that online sellers were using instant messaging and e-commerce as sale platforms.

As many as 77.5 percent and 70.5 percent of the respondents said they were using e-commerce platform Shopee and Tokopedia, respectively, while 62 percent of sellers also used instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp and LINE.

SMEs, which contribute more than half of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), have been impacted by the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

The government aims to have 10 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) go digital by the end of the year to help ease the economic burdens caused by the ongoing global health crisis. The plan is intended to increase the proportion of SMEs that have gone digital, which currently stand at around 13 percent of around 60 million small businesses.

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