[Weekly Updates] Airy Shuts Down; Cashlez Goes Public; and More

Another casualty of Covid-19 in Indonesia is Airy, a budget accommodation platform. It decides to shut down by the end of May. In contrary, payment platform Cashlez is making headlines by going public and opens for acquisition.

In other news, GudangAda raises Series A funding, while Donald Wihardja, former AC Ventures' partner, is appointed as the new CEO of MDI Ventures, Telkom's CVC.

Airy to Shut Down Business Permanently, Putting other OTAs in Jeopardy

Airy or Airy Rooms will terminate its operations permanently by the end of May 2020. DailySocial has been trying to reach the management since Wednesday (5/6), yet the information still sealed – although they didn’t deny the rumor. A reliable source has confirmed the layoff of the employees. As we observed, Airy is currently not displaying any property listings beyond May 31st, 2020.

Cashlez Officially IPO, Creating Opportunities for Other Acquisitions

The payment gateway and mPOS startup, Cashlez, officially going IPO at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (4/5) using “CASH” as the stock code. Cashlez is listed on the acceleration board, as well as being the 27th company to be trading on the stock exchange this year.

The company releases 250 million new shares at Rp350 per share. This capital amount covers around 17.5 percent of the agreed capital and is placed in Cashlez. Simultaneously, the company issued Series I Warrants at a ratio of 1:1.

Cashlez’ President Director, Tee Teddy Setiawan, said the company successfully obtained funding worth of Rp87.5 billion on this occasion. As planned, 61.31% of the funds were used for the acquisition of PT Softorb Technology Indonesia (STI), with the remaining 38.69% for working capital.

GudangAda Notches 372 Billion Rupiah Worth of Series A Funding

After securing seed funding last February 2020, GudangAda, B2B marketplace platform for FMCG products, (5/5) has successfully secured Series A funding round. In this round, the firm managed to bag funding worth of US$25.4 million, or around 372 billion Rupiah. This round was led by Sequoia India and Alpha JWC Ventures, with the participation of Wavemaker Partners. The company is to develop a new line of business and build up the internal team.

GudangAda is said to be successfully connecting around 50,000 traders in 500 cities, and covering almost 100 percent of FMCG wholesalers in Indonesia, through an enabler approach.

Donald Wihardja Serves as The New CEO of MDI Ventures

Recently manage fund for AC Ventures (a merger between Agaeti Ventures and Convergence Ventures), Donald Wihardja has officially appointed as the CEO of MDI Ventures. The position is vacant for 9 months after Nicko Widjaja left to lead BRI Ventures. Along with this appointment, Aldi Adrian Hartanto is promoted to be MDI's VP of Investments.

Hartanto said Donald Wihardja’s experience, in terms of investment and running a business, should bring more colors to the investment style and culture of the next-generation MDI Ventures. The main objective of MDI Ventures is to remain the same, which is in line with the vision of being a VC that focuses on top multi-stage funding in Southeast Asia.

It is hoped that Wihardja and his team can help to accelerate fundraising activities, to create an independent fund, as well as to support and strengthen the organization. In 2019 MDI Ventures successfully made 5 exits, with 3 acquisitions and 2 IPOs.