1. Startup

Insider Strengthens Team in Indonesia Post-Series C Funding Worth of 466 Billion Rupiah

Indonesia listed in the top 5 contributors from Insider's global operations

The SaaS platform for marketing activities, Insider, strengthens its commitment to run business in Indonesia, by adding local teams for consumer success, operations, sales, and marketing divisions. It was performed after securing series C funding of US$ 32 million (equivalent to 466 billion Rupiah), led by Riverwood Capital.

Recruiting local teams is part of the focus to channel the fresh funds from the Singapore based startup. Moreover, to increase its multichannel platform with AI technology, recruiting more R&D, sales and marketing teams, and entering new markets, the United States.

Insider's Regional Director of Indonesia & Philippines Joe Harahap said to DailySocial, Insider Indonesia's existence since first operated three years ago has shown satisfying results. Although with no further detail included, Indonesia has become the top five contributors to Insider's business globally.

"To date, there are 15 local teams, 70% of whom are consumer success, the rest are operations, sales, and marketing. We want to strengthen marketing activities to raise awareness in the market, therefore, we will recruit more people for consumer success," he said, Tuesday (7/28).

He continued, "Its development [in Indonesia] is still good year-on-year. As a result of the pandemic, we have made adjustments, but so far our growth is still quite good. Hopefully, it is to return to the usual level in September/October."

The solution Insider brought to Indonesia is a Growth Management Platform (GMP) that helps marketers drive business growth through a variety of channels, from acquisitions to activation, retention, and revenue. By utilizing real-time predictive segmentation supported by AI and machine learning, marketers can create personalized journeys for various platforms, whether on sites, mobile sites, applications, email, SMS, and other channels.

"Many technological solutions already exist but not as comprehensive as ours. The Insider solution is quite easy to integrate and use, so marketers can more quickly execute the strategy, especially we have a local support team here. "

The solution is claimed to have been utilized by hundreds of global and local brands. Joe said the composition of Insider users was a draw between large scale companies (enterprise) and medium scale companies.

Joe continued, the impact of this pandemic for the enterprise is the acceleration of digital-based solutions to develop its business because it is more efficient and measurable. He said this is a momentum to be used by Insider in offering solutions.

"We want to strengthen the consumer success team because during this pandemic many companies finally looked at digital as an opportunity to increase their sales. In the fourth quarter we will release a new solution in Indonesia."

Series C Funding

Regarding this C series funding, Insider bags total funds of $47 million (equivalent to 685 billion Rupiah). In this round, besides Riverwood Capital, investors were also preceded by predecessors Sequoia India, then Wamda Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst.

Insider's Co-Founder and CEO Hande Cilingir explained the company was classified as a healthy company, therefore, they did not want to raise funds too quickly. However, it should raise high interest from the VC.

"We only raise new capital when we consider ready to raise the standard to a completely new level. Self-imposed scarcity always makes us more creative, more resourceful, and more aggressive in achieving our goals," he said in an official statement.

He also showed his plan to strengthen its existence in 24 countries where they operated, and at the same time penetrating a new country as the United States. The solution offered by Insider is believed to be able to overcome the biggest pain-points of marketers.

Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian