Indonesia's Pluang doubles Series B to $110m
Indonesian micro-savings and micro-investment app Pluang has raised USD 55m in Series B funding led by Accel. It follows a USD 55m Series B investment led by Square Peg Capital last year.
The Accel-led round included contributions from Square Peg, BRI Ventures, a unit of Bank Rakyat Indonesia, and Gold House, an angel platform. Go-Ventures, a VC unit of GoTo, Openspace Ventures, and UOB Venture Management, each of which featured in the earlier Series B tranche, also participated.
Individual investors in the latest round included the founders of Vietnam-based blockchain gaming company Axie Infinity, as well as executives from start-ups such as Learnvest, Pismo, Monzo, Plublic.com, FalconX, and Fink. They were joined by The Chainsmokers, a US musical duo with angel experience that raised USD 35m for a debut fund in 2020.
Pluang helps more than 4m registered users in Indonesia make investments as small as USD 0.50 across various asset classes, including gold, equity indices, mutual funds, and cryptocurrencies. It has partnered with GoTo's GoPay app to provide a service called GoInvest, which allows users to buy gold in quantities as small as 0.01 grams.
“Providing mobile access to an easy to use investment product is a massive element of boosting financial literacy and financial inclusion throughout Indonesia, as well as Southeast Asia, as a region,” Claudia Kolonas, co-founder of Pluang, said in a statement.
“Not too long ago, many of the asset classes that can be accessed through Pluang were only available to the privileged and wealthy while the rest of the population experienced low financial literacy and limited investing options.”
Kolonas set up Pluang in 2019 alongside co-founder and co-CEO Richard Chua (pictured with Kolonas), a serial entrepreneur with experience at Google and Bain & Company. What started as a classroom idea while the two attended Harvard Business School is said to have experienced 22x growth in monthly transacting users and 28.5x growth in users with an active balance between January 2020 and November 2021.
The company will use the additional funding to build out its technology, move into international markets, and expand its asset classes. There are plans to launch a feature that allows users to invest in fractional US single stocks, a first-of-its-kind service in Indonesia.
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