Jurnal Sealed Seed Funding from East Ventures
Jurnal cloud-based accounting service published an undisclosed seed funding they’ve just secured from East Ventures. The funding will go to product and team development. Jurnal expected that the service would reach 5000 business owners to deal with their accounting matters by the end of this year.
Being founded by Daniel Witono and Anthony Kosasih back in January 2015 in beta version, Jurnal has so far served 20 clients, from merchants to importers, restaurant owners, and online sellers. The service is offered for free for the first 90 days, with two options of subscription: Starter with Rp 149 thousand per month and Pro with Rp 279 thousand per month.
Jurnal highlights the issue that almost every SME faces, which is the limited capital they own to hire an accountant and purchase a special accounting software. Jurnal is expected to facilitate SMEs to hire outsourced accountants and complete them with cloud-based system that may be accessed from anywhere and at anytime. Jurnal claimed that its product can be well-accessed using any browser, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet.
Willson Cuaca, East Ventures’ Managing Partner, stated in his press release about the investment, “One of Indonesia key economy growth engine is small-medium business. With its technology, Jurnal will help and accelerate Indonesia SMB into new level of efficiency. Daniel and Anthony have shown a strong passion and commitment to make it happens.”
Actually, Jurnal isn’t the only one targeting the segment. There is Akunting Mudah which gets incubated by Telkom’s Indigo Incubator and possesses quite similar services as Jurnal’s. Akunting Mudah also offers more varied and cheaper monthly subscription options. There is Online Pajak as well, which although focuses more on tax calculation, helps users taking care of their accounting stuffs as well.
Those who succeed in this segment are the ones who are able to present the solution of taking notes and reporting, including tax report creation which fits the needs of every business line at most.
Jurnal’s Co-Founder Anthony Kosasih added, “Business owners always want to know their business condition to create smart decisions, but most of them don’t have the time and capability to prepare the required report. Thus, affordable outsourced-accountant and proper software are just the answer to that problematic situation.”