Mandiri Capital Leads Crowde's Pre Series A Funding

Mandiri Capital Indonesia, the Mandiri backed CVC, leads the Pre Series A funding for the agriculture p2p lending, Crowde, worth of $1 million (around 14 billion Rupiah). In the meantime, Bank Mandiri also participated as an institutional lender for credit loan through Crowde for 100 billion Rupiah.

MCI's CEO, Eddi Danusaputro said, Crowde is selected based on Bank Mandiri's need and the same vision with MCI. Bank Mandiri is currently making an effort to increase productive credit to SME, micro in particular.

Crowde fits the requirements as they running a business in the productive sector for farming, fishing, and trading. Soon, MCI is to announce another funding led in the financial sector.

"MCI usually has an appetite for Series A, this time might be different for Crowde has shown a good capacity to complete Bank Mandiri," Eddi said on Thursday (9/19).

Crowde's CEO, Yohanes Sugihtononugroho stated MCI as a strategic investor to have symbiotic mutualism with for the sake of Crowde's future and Mandiri as in a group.

Funding collected in this round will be fully distributed to build technology for Indonesian farmers. He thought there is enough technology around but ineffective for Indonesia's farmers.

"Our focus is not far from farmers acquisition, in a way to build technology for Indonesian farmers. This is very segmented therefore challenging," he said.

The pre-Series A isn't close yet, said Yohanes. They're still looking for other strategic investors. However,  he's not willing to leak the target amount and when to stop.

Crowde's previous investor was Gree Ventures, the number is still undisclosed last year.

Credit loan from Bank Mandiri

Bank Mandiri is now the first national-scale institutional lender of Crowde with the amount of Rp100 billion credit loan. In this partnership, Crowde is to refer some potential debtors for selection based on individual criteria and to manage loans for each debtor.

Based on the selection, Bank Mandiri is to proceed with the loan submission. The maximum number to access by micro SMEs is up to Rp200 million.

Bank Mandiri's Retail Banking Director, Donsuwan Simatupang said, the scheme between two companies is very strategic. It can guarantee the quality of distributed funding by the bank, also an additional value from Crowde to the business player.

"In addition, the partnership scheme is to accelerate the credit approval process for the debtors can have the momentum to grow the business," he added.

The company itself can have broaden access towards SME segments on the agriculture sector to accommodate farmers for banking access in terms of funding.

In August 2019, Bank Mandiri has distributed productive microcredit funding worth of Rp23.51 trillion for micro-business players in the region. In fact, Crowde has channeled Rp90 billion funding to 17 thousand small-to-middle size farmers located in Java, Sumatera, and Eastern Indonesia.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian