Komunal, an online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company based in Surabaya, has secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by East Ventures. A local venture capital firm, Skystar Capital, also participated in the funding round.
It said, the investment will accelerate Komunal’ mission to bridge the funding gap much-needed by the growing population of underbanked micro small medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia. Based of official data, Indonesia’ MSMEs’ credit gap reached Rp1,000 trillion (US$71.43 billion) per year despite the massive growth of its banking and micro-finance sectors.
The gap is even more apparent outside Greater Jakarta. However, the country has a substantial and growing mobile phone user base, most of whom are already used to e-commerce and ride-hailing apps. This opportunity prompted Hendry Lieviant, ex-Goldman’ credit analyst, to start Komunal together with Rico Tedyono and Kendrick.
