Indonesian B2B fintech startup AyoConnect has landed USD 10 million in a pre-Series B funding round from Mandiri Capital Indonesia, the investment arm of state-owned lender Bank Mandiri, and Patamar Capital. Several individual investors, including well-known technopreneur Ilham Akbar Habibie; former managing director of Goldman Sachs, Paul Bernard; and iGlobe Partners’ principal Jeff Lin also participated in this financing round.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Jakob Rost, COO Chiragh Kirpalani, and CTO Adi Vora, AyoConnect provides a full stack of application programming interfaces, or APIs, for banking and financial institutions, mobile wallet platforms, and e-commerce companies. An API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to interact with each other. That means digital platforms can collaborate with banks and other financial institutions to bring new financial products and services to consumers.
The startup will use its fresh investment to ramp up business growth, recruit new team members, and explore opportunities for product development, especially in financial APIs, billing APIs, open finance, and insights APIs.
AyoConnect has more than 100 clients, including Bank BRI, Bank Mandiri, Dana, convenience store chain Indomaret, and Bukalapak. It connects more than 1,000 institutions through its network of APIs. Despite the pandemic, Ayoconnect recorded 1,000% annual revenue growth in Q2 2021, surpassing 50 million transactions, according to a statement by the company. AyoConnect also has partnerships with several leading Indonesian banks to boost their efforts towards developing open finance.
“We are delighted to partner with Ayoconnect as we have the same solid ambitions and vision to grow the Open Banking sector,” said Mandiri Capital Indonesia CEO, Eddi Danusaputro, in a statement. “AyoConnect’s vision in democratizing open finance for Indonesia has convinced us to invest, especially because Ayoconnect possesses the longest experience in building APIs. It has established a remarkable client list, and are best positioned in their approach of entering the open banking business,” he said.
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