Ajaib Closes Series A Funding Worth of 356 Billion Rupiah, Striving for Education and Acquisition of Millennial Users

The investment platform which recently acquired Primasia Unggul Sekuritas (Primasia Sekuritas), Ajaib Group, announced Series A funding of $25 million or the equivalent of 356.3 billion Rupiah. This round was led by Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-shing) and Alpha JWC Ventures, followed by SoftBank Ventures Asia, Insignia Ventures, and Y Combinator.

Previously, Ajaib had joined the Y Combinator program in 2018, as well as raised the seed round. Funding continued the following year, securing funds worth $2.1 million from Y Combinator, SoftBank Ventures, Alpha JWC Ventures, and Insignia Ventures.

"I feel proud for Ajaib has become the best choice of most of the new stock investors in Indonesia. As a millennial, I know how difficult it is when I started investing. That's why Ajaib is so focused on millennials and better education," Ajaib Group's Co-founder & CEO, Anderson Sumarli said.

The fresh money is to be used by the company to improve technology infrastructure, recruit technical teams, and expand product offerings. In addition, this round will also be used to support the Ajaib's educational campaign#MentorInvestasi which aims to assist the Indonesian government's efforts in educating millennials about investment and financial planning.

"The investment sector in Indonesia is quite underserved and lack of accessibility is one of the reasons. Ajaib was able to provide a solution to this problem and revolutionized the stock brokerage industry in less than two years. We are very impressed with Ajaib's growth speed and we are delighted to see Ajaib helping millions of young people in Indonesia towards better investment,” Jeffrey Joe, Managing Partner at Alpha JWC said.

In Indonesia, there are currently several digital services that accommodate user needs in investing; including mutual fund instruments, stocks, gold, and crypto-assets. In the Fintech Report 2020 released by DSResearch, surveying 329 respondents, the following results were obtained regarding application awareness for investment needs.

Some of the applications above are providing similar services with Ajaib, including Bibit, Tanamduit, Bareksa for the mutual fund; and Stockbit for stock.

Ajaib Group growth

Founded in 2019, Ajaib has become one of the fastest-growing investment platforms in Indonesia, through Ajaib Sekuritas (online stock securities) and Ajaib Reksadana (online mutual funds). Within 7 months of the launch of Ajaib Sekuritas in June 2020, the company recorded more than 10 billion stock lots have been traded in Ajaib.

Ajaib also supports more than 1 million monthly users on their investment journey. In December 2020, Ajaib also announced that the company is partnering with Korean drama actor Kim Seon-ho who plays Han Ji-pyeong in the Start-Up series on Netflix as a Brand Ambassador.

Anderson told DailySocial some time ago that the current pandemic has not been able to dampen the enthusiasm of Indonesian individual investors to pour money in the capital market. In the first two months since the launch of the stock availability at Ajaib, the company has registered tens of thousands of new users, most of whom are millennials.

"Currently, the market position has not fully recovered, therefore, the opportunity for users to reap profits in the capital market is quite large," he said.

In 2021, Ajaib will continue its mission to welcome a new generation of investors to the Indonesian capital market. As of December 2020, there were 1,592,698 stock investors in Indonesia, meaning that less than 1% of Indonesia's population has a stock account. In order to increase the number of domestic retail investors, Ajaib plans to expand the scope of investment education and financial planning campaigns targeting millennials.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian