Jenfi, a Singapore-based fintech startup, is expanding its business to Indonesia. The expansion follows their recent series A funding in 2021 and also includes Vietnam.
The startup provides alternative funding solutions for businesses that can only be used for growth activities such as, but not limited to, digital advertising.
Indonesia’s digital economy has grown significantly during the two years of the pandemic, based on data from the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo), which shows the local digital economy is projected to grow from Rp. 1.005 trillion in 2021 to Rp 4.531 trillion in 2030. One of the driving factors is the rise of eCommerce, in terms of the user number of sellers and consumers as well as the number of transactions. This presents an ideal opportunity for Jenfi to step in and provide much-needed funds to fuel growth.
“Indonesia is a very interesting market for Jenfi, given its large population and a growing ecommerce segment, which has not come close to its peak. While we are seeing fast growth, we realise that most traditional lending or funding solutions are not available to many local SMEs, so it can hinder growth in the market. Our solution is catered to solve these issues in Indonesia, as we are able to provide fast access to growth capital to spur the local digital economy,” said Jeffrey Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of Jenfi.
Based on the Indonesia E-commerce Statistics 2021, 24.4% of e-commerce businesses experienced increased revenue compared to the previous year. On the consumers’ side, online shopping has been becoming a new habit with a 25.5% increase after the pandemic, compared to 17.5% before the pandemic. This number is strengthened with 21 million new digital consumers during 2020 and the first half of 2021.
Jenfi’s financing services are specifically limited to growth services such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Google advertising services. This ensures that funding is utilised only to generate revenue and is tracked by integrating the business’s revenue accounts on services such as Shopify, Stripe, Braintree, Lazada, Shopee and Tokopedia. This ensures that Jenfi only benefits when the company generates revenue from the growth capital provided.
Prior to providing the funding, Jenfi also provided an automated risk assessment that caters to companies within the digital economy. This helps mitigate risk for the company, while also being able to accurately assess the financial stability of businesses compared to most traditional assessment services.
Jenfi has helped hundreds of digital-native companies in Southeast Asia, including B2B, B2C and SaaS business services.
“We continue to see strong demand for our solution in Indonesia and following our success in Singapore, we expect to see strong growth here as well. With tens of thousands of fast-growth companies in the country, the need for a solution like Jenfi is clear and we are looking forward to building the digital economy in Indonesia together with our customers,” concluded Jeffrey.