Pintu Bags 503 Billion Rupiah Funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

After reportedly receiving $6 million series A funding last May, crypto asset marketplace Pintu just announced the series A+ funding of $35 million or equivalent to 503 billion Rupiah. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and supported by Alameda Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Intudo Ventures and Pantera Capital.

Through this funding, Pintu is committed to strengthen market leadership as Indonesia’s top mobile-first crypto investing app. This fresh fund will be used to aggressively hire new talent across all major functions, roll out new products and features, and fuel future expansion.

Lightspeed partner Hemant Mohapatra believes that crypto is at a transition point to become the most important asset class in the world and will give birth to many companies that will become regional leaders.

"Pintu has created the strongest market brand, best user experience, and hands down one of the strongest teams we’ve ever come across in this market. We are excited to back them on their way in becoming the leading brand in crypto—not just in Indonesia but throughout the Southeast Asia region in the coming years,” he said.

Founded in April 2020, Pintu is designed to to meet the needs of Indonesians from all walks of life. With its mobile-driven interface and suite of smart features geared for beginner level traders, Pintu provides more comprehensive and open access for both novice and experienced traders to be able to mitigate risks towards market volatility and various other speculative measures.

Pintu offers a low barrier entry point starting from IDR 11,000 for both novice and experienced investors. There are currently 16 different dynamic cryptocurrencies on the platform and will soon be adding new coins, including NFT tokens and other highly sought-after crypto projects.

Co-founder & CEO of Pintu Jeth Soetoyo said, “We built Pintu with the belief that crypto is not just a technology, but also an asset class and community that will help overcome barriers to financial inclusion in Indonesia. [..] With the support of Pintu investors, we are committed to facilitating financial inclusion for all Indonesians.”

Crypto platform trend in Indonesia

Aside from Pintu, another new player, Coinomo has recently received fresh funds. The company born after the merge of Turn Capital acquired Dapp Pocket (a crypto wallet player from Taiwan) and Cappuu (a yield aggregator service) has released a beta version of its product in May 2021.

Previously, there are also several players has been exploring the crypto asset industry market, such as TokoCrypto and Nobi who focused on maximizing the potential for "passive income" for crypto investors. Tokocrypto alone has developed a hybrid CeDeFi (TKO) token which is claimed to be the first in Indonesia on top of Binance Smart Chain, as the early stage investor.

As one of the assets that is predicted to have great potential, various investment application developers also offer crypto as one of the products on their platform. For example, Pluang, which has managed to secure a pre-series B funding in March worth of around 288.8 billion Rupiah, led by OpenSpace Ventures.

Market potential

Globally, according to a report compiled by Research and Market, the market size for cryptocurrencies has reached $1,812 million in 2020, is projected to increase by $2,150 million this year, and soar to $5,158 million in 2026 with a CAGR of 19.04%.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, based on the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag) data, crypto asset investors as of May 2021 have reached 6.5 million people with a transaction value of IDR 370 trillion. This number is quite fantastic, considering there were 4.8 million people in the previous month with a transaction value of around Rp237.3 trillion (January-April 2021).

With high price volatility, the profile of crypto investors is usually the ones who are willing to take risks. It is important for the public to understand that crypto assets are not the same as each other. CoFTRA has published a list of 229 crypto assets that can be traded in Indonesia.

Reporting from Coinmarketcap.com, the global crypto market capitalization currently stands at $1.76 trillion, accounting for a decline of around 2.82%.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian