Indonesian invoicing startup Paper.id has raised a Series A funding round worth “billions of Rupiahs” from Singapore-based VC firm Golden Gate Ventures and fintech company Modalku.
With the fresh capital at its disposal, Paper.id says it aims to grow its product and reach millions of Indonesian SMEs that are not digitized yet.
Founded in 2016, Paper.id is a SaaS (Software as a Service) startup that provides an all-in-one platform for businesses to create invoices, manage their accounting, and inventory. The company particularly looks to empower the SME segment in the country, which is overwhelmingly still reliant on manual methods to manage its business.
According to State Minister for Cooperatives Small and Medium Enterprises (KEMENKOP UKM), only 8% out of Indonesia’s 59.2 million SMEs in Indonesia has utilized digital business platforms.
Currently Paper.id claims it has created over 800,000 invoices for more than 100,000 entrepreneurs on its platform.
The company recently launched a financial solution for SMEs, by working with various P2P companies and financial institutions to ensure safe and transparent funding distribution. One of Paper’id’s P2P partners for this feature is SoftBank-backed Modalku, which has decided to strengthen the strategic tie with Paper.id by making an investment in the company.
“Modalku and Paper.id have the same vision where we want to help SMEs to grow through having a seamless cash flow. Furthermore, Paper.id’s business model is in-line with one of Modalku’s products where the usage of invoice is used as the main document to propose loan fund. Through this collaboration, we hope that we can reach more potential SMEs to have funding access without collaterals,” said Modalku COO and Co-Founder Iwan Kurniawan.
Its participation in Paper.id’s new funding round marks the first announced investment Modalku has made in a fellow startup. The company, which also has operations in Singapore and Malaysia, claims to be Southeast Asia’s biggest peer-to-peer financing platform, having raised a funding round of $25 million last year, which at the time counted as the largest financing round for a P2P lender in Southeast Asia.
