Indonesian fintech Ayoconnect closes pre-Series B round with US$10m raised

INDONESIAN fintech company Ayoconnect has closed its pre-Series B funding round, raising US$10 million, it said in a press statement on Wednesday.

New investors include Mandiri Capital Indonesia, the corporate venture arm of Bank Mandiri, as well as South-east Asian venture capital firm Patamar Capital.

Other investors include Indonesian tech entrepreneur Ilham Akbar Habibie, ex-Goldman Sachs managing director Paul Bernard, iGlobe Partners principal Jeff Lin and other individuals from "leading financial institutions".

Established in 2016, Ayoconnect is a financial application programming interface (API) platform. It allows developers to choose from a wide range of financial "white-label" products on its platform to launch them for users.

The startup said its API stack has seen "rapid adoption" and is used by over 100 Indonesian companies including banks, retailers, e-commerce, fintechs, and e-wallets such as Bank BRI, Bank Mandiri, DANA, Indomaret, Bukalapak, Home Credit and Pegadaian.

The pre-Series B funding will allow the startup to focus on growth, recruitment and product development. This is particularly in building the API economy in Indonesia with full-stack API solutions such as financial APIs, bill APIs, open-finance APIs and insights APIs.

In August last year, the fintech company said it raised US$5 million in the pre-Series B funding round. Back then, investors included BRI Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Indonesia's Bank BRI; Tokyo-listed Internet company Kakaku.com; and Brama One Ventures.

Ayoconnect co-founder and chief executive Jakob Rost noted that Ayoconnect is one among very few companies in Indonesia that received investments from Indonesia's two largest banks - Bank Mandiri and Bank BRI.