LinkAja announced that it has acquired iGrow, a peer-to-peer lending startup that focuses on productive financing in agriculture. The company aims to expand its business line to online financing, especially for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in productive sectors. This is in line with LinkAja’s goal of encouraging financial inclusion and improving the welfare of Indonesians through economic independence.
“Expanding the line of business into the financing sector is a real step for LinkAja to provide easy access to finance and the economy, especially for the lower middle class and MSMEs,” said CEO Haryati Lawidjaja. She added that with LinkAja’s strong network in areas outside Indonesia’s main island Java, especially tier-2 and tier-3 cities, LinkAja hopes MSMEs in smaller areas will have the same facilities as those in tier-1 cities.
This acquisition came after LinkAja raised more than USD 100 million in its Series B funding round from companies such as Grab and Gojek. Meanwhile, iGrow previously received capital from a number of investors in its seed round, including from 500 Startups, East Ventures, and Rekanext. iGrow has also participated in Google’s Launchpad Accelerator.
“LinkAja is a company that has strong business fundamentals with the collaboration of shareholders between state-owned enterprises and big tech companies. This will accelerate the vision and mission of iGrow to have an impact on MSMEs and can make iGrow one of the main players in the financing sector for the productive sector,” said iGrow chief business development officer Jim Oklahoma.
iGrow was founded by Oklahoma and CEO Andreas Senjaya in 2014. The platform is designed to give people easy access to invest in agricultural businesses. It initially raised money from crowdfunding—even though the company didn’t claim to be a crowdfunding platform. However, iGrow transformed into a P2P lending platform, allowing it to raise funds from retail and institutional lenders and offer more flexible distribution.
This will be the first acquisition for LinkAja. It’s interesting to watch the company’s next steps, considering that currently, the digital payment platform already pools large capital from various digital players. Of course, ecosystem expansion will be its next focus.
This article first appeared in Daily Social.
