Claudia Kolonas, Founder, Pluang
Vincent Henry Iswaratioso, Co-founder and CEO, DANA
JJ Ang, Chief Financial Officer, GudangAda
Tushar Roy, Partner, Square Peg Capital (Moderator)
The pandemic proved to be a shot in the arm for digital financial services as people took to these platforms for day-to-day transactions to investments and more sophisticated instruments.
Indonesia, which mirrored the global trends, saw a huge surge in demand for such services that in turn drew the interest of prominent international investors who backed fintech plays including wealth-tech platforms riding on the wave of strong user adoption for their services.
Indonesia, where a vast majority of the population is unbanked or under-banked, digital financial services are seen as a way towards financial inclusion. And, financial services players across the spectrum are expanding into different asset classes, drawing up plans to foray into new markets and also widen the user base through financial literacy and inclusion initiatives.
In this session, we feature online investing platform Pluang, digital wallet DANA and fintech investor Square Peg Capital.
GudangAga, which last year raised over $100 million in its Series B round, is building and strengthening its ecosystem of service offerings, including logistics, POS SaaS, marketing services, data services, and financial services. For GudangAda CFO J J Ang, the end goal is to develop a highly capital efficient and scalable platform for all B2B stakeholders in Indonesia.
Pluang recently raised $55 million in a funding round led by US venture capital firm Accel. Pluang, which started as a platform to allow users to trade gold, has deepened its suite to include indexes, mutual funds and crypto assets. Pluang founder Claudia Kolonas believes in creating a level playing field for Indonesians by increasing access to investment products.
DANA was set up in 2017 by Vincent Henry Iswaratioso, who has been a fintech entrepreneur for more than a decade. Prior to DANA, he founded payments gateway INDOMOG in 2008. Vince is recognized in both the technology and financial industries for his contribution to building a cashless society.
From Square Peg Capital, we have partner Tushar Roy who focuses on technology companies in Southeast Asia. He was an early investor and on the boards of PropertyGuru, Kredivo, Doctor Anywhere, Stashaway, Pluang, among others.
Claudia Kolonas, Vincent Henry Iswaratioso and Tushar Roy will share their reading of the scope of the digital financial services space in Indonesia, the regulatory challenges, market potential for trading platforms in the context of the new IPO pipeline and more.
