LinkAja Officially Acquires iGrow

LinkAja today (29/4) announced its acquisition of iGrow, a p2p lending startup that focuses on productive financing in agriculture. In the statement, this corporate action aims to expand LinkAja's business line to online financing, especially for the MSMEs productive sector. This is in line with LinkAja's goal of encouraging financial inclusion and improving the Indonesian people welfare through economic independence.

This move was made after LinkAja previously managed to book series B funding of more than $ 100 million - including from Grab and Gojek. Meanwhile, iGrow was backed by some investors in its seed funding, including 500 Startups, East Ventures, Rekanext, and through its participation in the Google Launchpad Accelerator program.

In her remarks, LinkAja's CEO, Haryati Lawidjaja said, "The business line expansion to the financing sector is a real step for LinkAja in providing easy access to finance and economy, especially for the lower-middle class and MSMEs [...] Supported by LinkAja's strong ecosystem network in various areas outside Java and tier-2 and 3 cities, LinkAja aims to provide equal access to financing for MSME players focused on Java and tier-1 cities."

Also, iGrow's Chief Business Development, Jim Oklahoma said, "We are very pleased to be collaborating with LinkAja as a national electronic money service provider with the same goals [..] LinkAja is a company with strong business fundamentals also collaboration of shareholders between SOEs and large technology companies. This will accelerate iGrow's vision and mission to have an impact on MSMEs also put iGrow as one of the leading players in the financing for the productive sector. "

Apart from Jim, iGrow was also founded by Andreas Senjaya (CEO) in 2014. Their platform was designed to simplify investment in a productive agricultural land, it was more like crowdfunding - even though the company did not claim to be a crowdfunding platform. However, along with its development, iGrow has transformed into a p2p lending, therefore, it can raise funds (from retail and institutional lenders) with more flexible distribution.

This will be LinkAja's first acquisition. It will be interesting to watch the company's next steps, considering that the electronic money platform already has a large enough capital, supported by various strategic digital players. In fact, the focus will be on the ecosystem expansion.