“In Indonesia, over 60 million micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) rely on outdated methods of bookkeeping or don’t do bookkeeping at all,” stated the co-founder of BukuWarung, a digital bookkeeping startup, Abhinay Peddisetty.
BukuWarung aims to help merchants, more so small merchants do business efficiently. It has announced that it raised an undisclosed amount of money in its seed funding that was led by East Ventures.
AC Ventures (previously Agaeti Ventures and Convergence Ventures), Tanglin Venture Partners, and Golden Gate Ventures also participated in the funding round. Other backers include Indonesian tycoon Michael Sampoerna as well as strategic investors from Gojek, PayPal, Xendit, Zen Rooms, Grab, Flipkart, and Rapyd, among others.
The acquired funds will be used to expand the Jakarta-based team on functions such as growth, product, design, engineering, and partnerships.
The BukuWarung app tracks all transactions, including sales, credit, and expense, helping small merchants get their cash flow visibility through business reports. It claims that merchants get three times faster repayments, plus they see increased cash because of the automatic reminders that are sent by the app. The merchants are also able to save an average of US$6.70 in bookkeeping.
Most of the people using the BukuWarung app are from tier-three and tier-two cities, a statement revealed.
The startup was started late 2019, and within the few months they have been operational, the app has recorded millions of cash and credit transactions by over 250,000 MSMEs across 500+ small towns and cities in Indonesia.
However, Peddisetty stated that they still have a long way to go. “Despite the strong initial traction, we are still less than 1% done,” he said. “Kasbon (credit) drives up to 80% of our business, which is why we have decided to focus on digital bookkeeping as our initial product,” he further added.
Co-founder Chinmay Chauhan stated that BukuWarung is planning to launch new features such as sending links to clients that will allow them to accept payments via e-wallets to reduce potential contracting of the rapid spreading COVID-19 disease. “We have also partnered with healthcare startups to create awareness for COVID-19, as the safety of our users is our number one priority right now,” Chauhan said.
Previously, Chauhan and Peddisetty both worked for a Singapore marketplace app, Carousell. The founder of Lunasbos, a two-way accounting app for MSMEs in the country, is also a part of the founding team of BukuWarung.