(Oct 4): PT Bukalapak.com raised capital from investors including Indonesian media giant Emtek and South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group Co., a round of funding that valued the online marketplace at more than US$2.5 billion ($3.4 billion).
The Jakarta-based startup, which last month said it would cut about 10% of its workforce to focus on profitability, announced the transaction but wouldn’t provide more details. Bukalapak, backed by China’s Ant Financial and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, was previously valued at about US$2 billion, according to a person familiar with the company’s accounts. GIC joined this funding round, said the person, who asked not to be named because the matter is private.
“We have been making a lot of changes internally since early this year,” Bukalapak Chief Strategy Officer Teddy Oetomo said. “We want to strike the right balance among our growth, long-term sustainability and positive impact for Indonesia.”
Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, has turned into a hotly contested market for e-commerce. The market is projected to expand from US$21 billion in 2019 to US$82 billion by 2025, according to a joint study by Google, Temasek Holdings and Bain & Co. Bukalapak was the country’s most popular shopping app after Tokopedia and Shopee in terms of monthly active users in 2019’s second quarter, according to research firm iPrice Group.
See: Singapore Internet economy to hit US$12 bil this year: Google-Temasek report
Bukalapak, which means “open stall” in the local language, is majority Indonesian-owned and wants to remain so, according to Oetomo. Founded by three engineering friends in Jakarta in 2010, the company has more than 70 million active users, over 4 million sellers and 2 million mom-and-pop kiosks across Indonesia.
