We have led a USD55m round in Pluang, an Indonesian wealth-tech leader. We feel privileged to partner with co-founders Claudia Kolonas, Richard Chua and their fantastic team. We are also excited to team up with our co-investors in this round: Go-Ventures, SIG and Openspace Ventures.

A Labour of Love

Love: we fell in love with Claudia and Richard’s vision for the future of wealth creation for more Indonesians in our first meeting. They possess tremendous ambition and bring an innovative approach to provide new ways for more Indonesian retail investors to generate wealth over time.

Labour: we met Claudia and Richard as they were closing a round of financing. They did not need more capital and had plenty of people offering it to them. We had to work very hard to convince them to let us join the rocket-ship – and we are very grateful they accepted.

Building the Infrastructure for Wealth Creation in Indonesia

Indonesia is one of the most exciting markets globally, with a large (277m+), young population and a fast-growing economy that is bringing more families into a stronger socio-economic footing over time. Indonesian consumers are also embracing tech at break-neck speed, across ride-hailing, e-commerce, fintech and many other categories.

A growing number of consumers, young and old, are generating more income than ever before and are turning their mind to how they can create long-term savings. However, as a starting point, levels of financial literacy are low and access to investment products (via gold or local stocks, for example) has been either difficult to achieve for most people or restricted to offline mechanisms that are opaque and far more costly than they need to be. For historic reasons, Indonesian investors are also limited in their ability to access offshore listed savings products.

Enter Pluang, whose vision is to democratise access to wealth creation for every Indonesian. This will happen through:

• Product-level innovation powered by expert knowledge of financial products and systems, and deep, collaborative relationships with regulatory institutions to enable access to more wealth creation options for retail investors
• Powerful distribution that reaches millions of consumers quickly and efficiently. Pluang achieves this by partnering with tech platforms with massive reach, such as Gojek, Dana and Bukalapak, with several more in the pipeline, and
• Increasing the financial literacy of consumers to empower them to make better savings decisions. Pluang puts a strong emphasis on educating its customers on investing and long-term wealth creation.

Pluang already provides the broadest asset class access to everyday retail investors in Indonesia, encompassing gold, equity indices, mutual funds and cryptocurrencies – with more to come.

A Personal Mission

We were impressed with the connection that Claudia and Richard have to Pluang’s mission.

• Claudia had spent her professional and personal life growing up around and working across several financial services businesses in Indonesia and the broader SEA region. She has seen close-up the lack of access in Indonesia to wealth creation options and wanted to do something about it.
• Richard has been investing since a very young age in Australia and understood first -hand the role that financial literacy and access can play in creating long term wealth. Through his time at Google and Bain he became increasingly interested in ways to democratise access to financial services in emerging markets.

Claudia and Richard met while doing their MBAs at Harvard Business School and teamed-up around their shared passion to make an impact on financial access and literacy in Indonesia, and the rest is history. They started Pluang in 2019, and the company has already amassed ~3 million registered users while remaining incredibly capital efficient.

The stage is now set to scale things to the next level. Much of what the company is working on right now is “in stealth”, and we are excited to see what they bring to market next and the impact they create on the Indonesian consumer wealth-creation landscape.

Find out more, at Pluang.com

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