March 20, 2024
AwanTunai is a Jakarta based FinTech-company that offers solutions to increase access to capital for micro, small and medium sized enterprises in the supply chain of fast-moving consumer goods (FCMG). Norfund is investing up to 9.2 million USD in the company to help create more jobs in Indonesia.
The Consumer Goods Industry in Indonesia is fragmented with a large number of SMEs and small retailers scattered throughout the country. Access to credit is low, and many SMEs do not have access to formal financing. Consumer goods, such as food or household products sold to consumers, remain manual with a limited share of sales done online.
“We have been impressed with how AwanTunai has been able to use FinTech to reach out to segments of the SME sector that are underserved or unbanked in Indonesia, and we are looking forward to support the company’s ambition to reach out to even more companies, allowing them to grow and create more jobs”, says Fay Chetnakarnkul, Regional Director for Asia in Norfund.
Ambitious founders
The founders Rama Notowidigo and Dino Setiawan started the company in 2017 with a mission to optimize the traditional and mainly manual consumer goods supply chain with technology and access to finance, in order to advance and develop communities in Indonesia. They did so after visiting areas where especially access to working capital was very limited and often only available from local loan sharks with extremely high interest rates.
“We’re proud at AwanTunai to be able to develop patented in-house machine learning innovations that has enabled us to successfully manage unsecured SME lending risk. The usual requirement for hard collateral to manage risk in SME lending has been a long running barrier to financial inclusion. We hope the unsecured SME lending innovation we’re scaling in Indonesia will eventually be deployed across other developing economies.” Says Dino Setiawan, co-founder and CEO of AwanTunai.
Several FinTech investments, but first time as equity
Norfund has previously given loans to FinTech companies such as Wave Mobile Money, operating in Senegal and the Ivory Coast, and Lula Lend, a tech-driven financial institution providing loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in South Africa.
The investment in AwanTunai is however the first equity investment in the FinTech sector. The investment will enable AwanTunai to scale up its operations and reach more unbanked and underserved companies. Other lead investors in this round include MUFG Innovation Partners (MUIP) and Finnfund.
“We look forward to supporting AwanTunai’s vision of creating a more inclusive and digital economy in Indonesia”, says Chetnakarnkul.