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BukuWarung bags $60m series A funding
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ukuWarung, the maker of a bookkeeping and point-of-sale (POS) app for warung (kiosks), has received US$60 million in a series A funding round led by United States-based Valar Ventures and Goodwater Capital.
BukuWarung said the latest investment was the largest series A funding globally for fintech startups in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector and brought the startup's total funding to $80 million to date.
"Investing in BukuWarung is a compelling opportunity, and we proudly announce that this is our first investment in Indonesia," said Valar Ventures founding partner James Fitzgerald as reported by kontan.co.id.
Former GoPay CEO Aldi Haryopratomo and Victor Jacobsson, the CEO of Europe's biggest startup, Klarna, also took part in the funding round as angel investors.
BukuWarung has a number of notable backers, such as fintech-focused venture firm Quona Capital, East Ventures, AC Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures and Tanglin Venture Partners.
Read also: Bookkeeping startup BukuWarung raises pre-A funding from Quona, East Ventures
The BukuWarung app began as an online bookkeeping solution for SMEs. It has since evolved to include digital payments, enabling merchants to move their transactions from offline to online systems.
The company plans to use the fresh funds to enhance its technology, double its management team and triple its engineering and product staff in Indonesia, India and Singapore.
"We plan to digitize SMEs across Indonesia and then expand to other countries," said BukuWarung cofounder and CEO Abhinay Peddisetty.
The latest investment comes just four months after BukuWarung received an undisclosed amount of funding from another US-based venture capital firm, Rocketship.vc.
Established in 2019, BukuWarung claims to have more than 6.5 million merchants on its platform from 750 locations across Indonesia, mostly larger cities.
Digitizing SMEs, especially warung, has become a trend among tech companies as small retailers make up a major chunk of Indonesia’s $380 billion retail market, according to management consulting company Redseer.
Read also: Tech giants race to digitize ‘warung’
SMEs also account for around 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product and employ some 97 percent of the total labor force.
