Fintech Lending Startup Helicap Expands to Indonesia, Raising $5 Million Funding

Helicopter Capital (Helicap), a Singapore-based lending platform developer startup, today (9/13) announced it has raised $5 million (around IDR 74 billion) of Pre-Series A Funding. It was led by East Ventures and Soilbuild Group Holdings. It's to focus on the expansion to the Indonesian market.

In its Indonesian debut, there will be data and technology teams to improve the company's data collection capacity. In the distribution to SMEs, Helicap is using its own data analysis platform. The analysis was intended to generate return and credit score to convince investors (institutions) in providing loans.

Helicap introduced itself as the Capital as a Services platform within B2B2C scope. They didn't provide direct loans, but distributing loans from partners with data analysis as the collateral. Particularly in Indonesia, Helicap admits providing loans only from the registered lenders in OJK to ensure obedience with the local regulation.

The name "Helicopter" is said to have a certain meaning. Helicap covers all access to credit data collected by some financial organizations. The data was managed to produce insights for investment allocation. It's considered to be the helicopter view or comprehensive knowledge of the to-be-invested business.

"Southeast Asia becomes the most developing economic region, driven by SMEs. However, it also produced a fragmented loan ecosystem, incapable to serve capital loans for business as a whole," David Wang, Helicap's CEO and Co-Founder added.

He continued, East Ventures entree in business will give essential contribution in Indonesia. Support from Soilbuild is to validate Helicap's portfolio, because of their expertise in the property business segment in particular. Since its operational debut in the second quarter of 2018, Helicap claims to distribute loans to more than 100,000 customers.

Indonesian expansion has set an optimistic target for this startup. The business in Indonesia is targeted to run in this year's fourth quarter. Soon, they'll appoint the Country Manager to lead the business maneuver in Indonesia.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian