LinkAja Introduces New CFO and Plans for Series B Funding in 2020

The e-money platform LinkAja aims for doubling its business growth by next year. As the CEO, Danu Wicaksana said, the company has now acquired 40 million registered users per November 2019.

"We've seen the e-money industry is getting crowded next year. We'll be more expansive, especially with the current achievement," he said at the launching of LinkAja Outlook 2020, Tue (2/17).

In order to accelerate expansion, Wicaksana added, the company is to add more talents, from only 80 people in the beginning until now become 400 people on board, 250 of them are engineers.

In terms of service, LinkAja's Chief Marketing Officer, Edward Kilian said there will be more "use case" development in 2020, including features/services for consumers and merchants. The latest one to be launched is LinkAja Syariah.

"The financial service must be around the wealth, loan, and protection product. Our use case development will be around that too and focused on transportation. For us, building a complete ecosystem is very important," Kilian said.

LinkAja is to increase the number of cash-in corners which is currently reached 1 million. For the local ecosystem, the company will enter the 35 clusters in micro and ultra micro segment.

Post the commercial as an e-payment product in February, LinkAja is moving faster with the maneuver as a solution platform, not just an option.

Since its debut, LinkAja is targeting "mass and aspirant" market which is defined as the underbanked and unbanked segment looking at e-money as a solution for daily needs.

Some initiative use case as LinkAja's main target is products related to daily usage, such as transportation, bill payment, and gas shopping.

In terms of product, LinkAja has secured 200 payment transactions for telco products, 400 bill payment transactions, 3,000 transactions for donation and religious building, 250 thousand offline merchants, 380 e-commerce partners, and also an option at 2,500 gas station.

In the transportation line, LinkAja is now available in Gojek, Grab, Bluebird, Commuter Line, Damri, KAI Access, soon to be available in MRT Jakarta.

Based on Fintech Report 2019, Gopay has been the most used digital wallet with 83.3%, followed by Ovo (81.4%), DANA (68.2%), and LinkAja (53%).

The new CFO and fundraising plan

In the Outlook 2020 disclosure, Ikhsan Ramdan as the new Chief Financial Officer has ensured that Series B Funding is to be held next year.

"We're still in the growth stage, and need funding to expand. Direction from our shareholder is to be open with private partners. It can be through partnership or capital injection," he added.

Mentioning the strategy to burn money which also been adopted by some leading players, he emphasized on the company's strategy that is going to be focused on the vision and mission, not the valuation for becoming unicorn," he said.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian