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Pluang jumps on investment app bandwagon with fresh $35m funding
The latest funding round was led by Melbourne-based Square Peg Capital and strengthens the Indonesian start-up’s development of products to invest in stocks, gold and cryptocurrencies.
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J
akarta-based Pluang has raised US$35 million in its latest funding round, strengthening its position in a vibrant market as more and more Indonesians invest in stocks, gold and cryptocurrencies.
The start-up has raised a total of $55 million in two funding rounds so far this year. Square Peg Capital, which invests in Australia, Israel and Southeast Asia, led the latest funding round.
A consortium consisting of Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and UOB Venture Management participated in the latest funding round. Pluang’s existing investors, Go-Ventures, the venture capital arm of tech company GoTo, and Openspace Ventures also joined.
“We are lucky to keep adding to our investment in Pluang with every funding series, making it one of our main portfolio [items],” Go-Ventures partner Aditya Kamath was quoted in a press release as saying on Monday.
“We are always impressed by Pluang’s product innovation, business growth and its best economic unit. We hope we can keep working with Pluang in the coming years.”
Pluang, which was established in 2019, offers investment services for gold, crypto assets, mutual funds and what it calls Micro E-Mini Index Futures. So far, the company has 3 million registered users.
Indonesia’s stock market has seen a surge in the number of investors, which rose by 1 million to 2.69 million in the first eight months of 2021, the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) reported earlier this month. That increase is nearly double the number of new investors registered in the full year of 2020.
Read also: Record number of Indonesians rush into stock market
The number of average active investors per month also rose 2.2-fold to 641,442, thanks in part to the rise in retail investors.
Pluang said it was planning to use the fresh funds to speed up the launch of a new product to catch up with growing customer demand and recruit new talent.
In August, cryptoasset marketplace Pintu announced it had collected $35 million in series A+ funds, which it intended to use to include more assets on its trading platform and develop new features.
Read also: Crypto marketplace Pintu raises $35 million in latest funding round
Earlier this year, mutual funds investment app Bibit raised $65 million to launch new products, develop its technology, acquire talent and expand financial literacy programs to benefit from the growing investment appetite of young Indonesians.
Bibit received the funding from Sequoia Capital India, AC Ventures, East Ventures, Prosus Ventures, Tencent and Harvard Management Company.
