Paving the way forward with local partnerships
Hot on the heels of our US$2 million Pre-Series A funding announcement last month, our CEO and founder, Calvin Goh, recently spoke with DailySocial.id to share his insights on why Indonesia is a key target in KOKU’s regional expansion strategy, as well as how the company plans to make headway into one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing digital economies.
Read the original interview published in Bahasa Indonesia or scroll below for a translated version.
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A Peek into KOKU’s Expansion Plans for Indonesia
KOKU’s expertise lies in FX tech-enablement
KOKU, a fintech start-up from Singapore, has successfully raised US$2 million in Pre-Series A funding that was led by Jason Zeng. The funding will further accelerate KOKU’s product development roadmap and regional expansion, with Indonesia as one of its key targets.
KOKU is a start-up with expertise in foreign exchange (FX) tech-enablement. They design, develop and provide technology to the segment of the market who are underserved, including non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) such as remittance houses and liquidity providers.
They do this by providing the FX TechUP Suite consists of three solutions; Money Transfer Stack, Liquidity Providers (LP) Connect and Integrations Marketplace. The three solutions are designed to help NBFIs that have legacy or little to no technology. The suite claims to be able to grow business opportunities and increase the scale of business offerings for its customers.
“With our customers able to integrate solutions unique to their customer-facing and operational needs or expansion plans, we’re looking to empower them with the ability to provide cheaper, quicker and digital-first money transfer and FX services to their customers,” KOKU’s Founder & CEO, Calvin Goh explained.
Getting off the ground with local partnerships
For expansion, they see Indonesia as an extremely promising market. There is tremendous potential for the country to contribute to the local, and regional growth of the remittance industry. In addition, Indonesia is rapidly growing and is proving to be extremely dynamic from a technological perspective.
Nevertheless KOKU will not open a branch office in Indonesia at this time. Instead, they are keen to establish partnerships with those who have expertise in the local market. The partners they would look to collaborate with include but not limited to e-wallet players, micro-lending and payment companies, remittance and money exchange businesses.
KOKU is also potentially looking at tie-ups with local supermarkets and convenience stores, which may help the unbanked community get access to financial services.
“We’re still in our early stages in our plans for Indonesia. With that said, we’re being extremely strategic in our journey as we want to ensure we collaborate with the right partners. As part of our strategy, the current priority is to continue improving our technology. So that when the time comes, we’re able to successfully empower our potential Indonesian customers with the right technology to drive their growth. Our long-term business goal will be to eventually help overseas businesses enter the Indonesia market as part of their business growth and expansions,” Goh explained.
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A version of this interview was originally published in Bahasa Indonesia on DailySocial.id.