Xendit Officially Becomes the New Unicorn Startup in Indonesia

Financial technology (fintech) startup Xendit announced the acquisition of 150 million US dollars or around IDR 2.1 trillion from the Series C funding round led by Tiger Global Management and participated by a number of investors.

According to an official statement, Thursday (16/9/2021), the new investment from this round of funds also makes Xendit a new unicorn startup in Indonesia.

“Unicorn” is a nickname for startup companies that have a valuation value of 1 billion US dollars (around IDR 14.2 trillion) or more.

Thus, there are now eight Indonesian unicorn startups. Besides Xendit, previously there were Gojek, Tokopedia, Bukalapak, Traveloka, OVO, J&T Express, and OnlinePajak Xendit was founded by Moses Lo in 2015.

This fintech startup provides services in the form of a payment system (payment gateway) to facilitate the transaction process of business people, ranging from MSMEs, startups, e-commerce, to large companies.

“Xendit’s digital payments infrastructure enables new businesses in the Southeast Asia region to receive payments faster, and supports large companies with world-class modern financial services,” said Moses.

According to Xendit’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Tessa Wijaya, Xendit has experienced an increase in total payment volume by more than 200 percent from year to year.

“Xendit recorded an increase in total payment volume of more than 200% year over year (yoy) in Indonesia and the Philippines, continuing our track record of growing more than 10% month-on-month, since our inception,” said Tessa.

Xendit’s Plan After Reaching Unicorn Status

The value of payments (TPV) processed annually now reaches the range of Rp. 128.4 trillion. “Our new status as a unicorn will help reinforce the mission that has been ours from the start – to provide a reliable and secure financial infrastructure for millions of companies across the Southeast Asia region,” said Tessa.

In addition to Indonesia, Xendit has expanded its services to other markets, for example to the Philippines market at the end of 2020.

In addition to payment gateway services, Xendit is experimenting with providing working capital loans to merchants and exploring the possibility of issuing credit cards with partners.

He added that the status of a unicorn startup (a minimum valuation of US$ 1 billion) for Xendit will help strengthen the mission that has been the company’s grip since the beginning.

“That is to provide reliable and secure financial infrastructure for millions of companies in Southeast Asia, as well as help business people to grow and advance with the growing digital economy,” he explained.

Previously, Xendit announced Accel-led Series B funding in March 2021. In total, Xendit has raised IDR 3.4 trillion (US$ 238 million) since 2015.

Xendit is the first Indonesian tech startup to graduate from the YCombinator incubator program and is the best Southeast Asian company on the YC Top 100 list.

Launching Xendit Inventory Sync Solution

Payment solutions fintech startup Xendit announced its latest SaaS solution “Xendit Inventory Sync” to target online sellers who trade on digital platforms. The solution is part of the company’s ambition to collaborate more with MSMEs.

Xendit Inventory Sync is a multi-channel technology innovation for managing stock inventory of products sold online at Tokopedia, Shopee, as well as sites such as Shopify and WooCommerce.

Thus, business people can more easily monitor the amount of stock in each channel in one neat and integrated dashboard.

This solution exists because almost all business people in Indonesia implement a multi-channel marketing strategy in order to combine sales channels both in the marketplace and on the website.

E-commerce services are currently in a golden age because of the ever-increasing transactions. From 2% in 2016 to 20% in 2020. It is estimated that e-commerce transactions can reach 40% of the total retail transactions in Indonesia in the next few years.