Indonesia

Waste4Change is building a circular economy in Indonesia • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 14, 2022Posted in Asia, circular economy, environment, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Startups, waste-management, Waste4ChangeNo Comments

Even the largest landfills in Indonesia are at (or nearing) capacity, and the government has set an ambitious target of 30% waste reduction by 2025. Waste4Change is one of the companies that wants to help by increasing rates of recycling and enabling better waste management. The startup, which currently manages more than 8,000 tons of waste very year, announced today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding, co-led by AC Ventures and PT Barito Mitra Investama. Other participants in the round include Basra Corporation, Paloma Capital, PT Delapan Satu Investa, Living Lab Ventures, SMDV and Urban Gateway Fund. Founded in 2014, Waste4Change has seen a CAGR of 55.1% since 2017, and is present in 21 Indonesian cities, where its services are currently used by about 100 B2B clients and more than 3,500 households. Waste4Change was created by founder and CEO Mohamad Bijaksana Junerosano based on conversations between PT Greeneration Indonesia, an NGO, and waste management organization PT Bumi Lestari Bali (ecoBali) to form a company that reduces the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Junerosano is an environmental engineer by training and spent 16 years working in the solid waste sector. Junerosano says that a major opportunity is created by Indonesia’s low recycling rates (about 11% to 12%), which means there is a lot of valuable recyclable material that is being left behind. “Waste reduction is a top priority, followed by material optimization and recycling which supports the concept of a truly circular economy,” he told ZebethMedia. Waste4Change will use its new funding on expansion and increasing its waste management capacity up to 100 tons per day over the next 18 months, with the target of reaching more than 2,000 tons per day over the next five years. Waste4Change’s team Junerosano said Waste4Change differentiates from traditional waste management solutions by providing an end-to-end solution, with a focus on sustainability and zero waste. Part of its strategy includes more digital integration for monitoring and recording the process of waste management and automating its material recovery facilities. “We see digital integration as a valuable tool to build a sustainable waste management ecosystem,” he said. “The goal is always to create harmony between the environment, the economy and the people.” Waste4Change’s digital integration strategy this year and next include improving its waste journey report and monitoring, which its customers receive after their trash is processed. To use Waste4Change, customers can ask for a pick-up team to collect their pre-sorted trash or drop it off themselves. The company currently has 108 employees and 141 waste management operators, with plans to add 52 more people to its team and work with 300 informal waste collectors and SMEs. Informal waste collectors include scavengers, waste banks, waste stalls and waste aggregators. For recycling business partners, including informal waste collectors, Waste4Change is building a platform to help them sell and buy solid waste with the company. The goal is increase the traceability and accuracy of the waste management process. It is also working on a program called Send Your Waste, where consumers can send waste to Waste4Change’s pick-up points. An app tells them what kinds of waste to send, where the nearest pick-up point is and what kind of reward they can receive. Junerosano says informal waste collectors tend to be selective about the materials they collect, picking out PET bottles, glass and cardboard. But this means less desirable materials like PP plastic, multilayer packaging and styrofoam are often left behind, polluting the environment. To combat that, Waste4Change has started a service called Waste Credit, that gives incentives for picking up certain materials, and also makes it easy for waste collectors to build this businesses. “Considering the crucial role of the informal sector in improving Indonesia’s recycling rate, we aim to build a waste recycling platform that will keep the system sustainable,” he said. “We are more than happy to bring it to life with a joint venture or joint operation with other industry stakeholders, including those in the informal sector and local Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (3R) temporary waste storage sites.” In a statement, AC Ventures founding partner Pandu Sjahrir said, “Waste4Change is a pioneer providing an end-to-end waste management solution. Sustainability is the team’s main focus, with a demonstrated commitment to building a better future for Indonesia. The company is proving that it has reached product-market fit and has the potential to scale across the nation.”

Open finance startup Ayoconnect’s APIs enable financial inclusion in Southeast Asia • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Asia, Ayoconnect, financial inclusion, Fintech, Indonesia, open finance, Southeast Asia, StartupsNo Comments

Focused on Southeast Asia, Ayoconnect’s APIs make it faster for businesses to launch new financial services, instead of needing to build their own tech infrastructure. It is also licensed by Indonesia’s central bank, enabling it to offer more services. The open finance startup announced today it has closed a $13 million Series B extension round led by SIG Venture Capital, with participation from CE Innovation Capital and returning investor PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus. This brings its total raised to $43 million, including the oversubscribed first tranche of its Series B, which was led by Tiger Global and closed in January 2022. Founded in 2016, with a team of about 250 people, Ayoconnect is currently working toward more financial inclusion for Indonesian consumers and SMEs. It works with regulators and incumbent banks, and was recently awarded a Bank of Indonesia (BI) Payment Service Provider Category 1 license. Ayoconnect says it is the only open finance player in Indonesia to be licensed by the central bank. Ayoconnect’s new funding will be used for leadership hiring, and on its Ayoconnect’s product and technology, including new solutions for payments, data and banking and new APIs for account opening and card issuing. The startup recently launched automated recurring direct debit with seven of Indonesia’s largest banks (Mandiri, BRI, BNI, CIMB Niaga, Danamon, Bank Syariah Indonesia and Bank Neo Commerce). This allows Ayoconnect’s clients to use its direct debit API and get the ability to make recurring debits from customers’ savings accounts at multiple banks. Before starting Ayoconnect, founder and CEO Jakob Rost was a managing director at Lazada. After leaving Lazada, he spent several years living in Indonesia, where he saw how the country could benefit from more digital financial inclusion. For example, it is the fourth largest country in the world by population, but about half of people are unbanked, he said. It also has a complicated geography, resulting in a weak financial infrastructure, fragmentation and less standardization in the banking sector. Furthermore, Rost added, consumer-facing businesses in Indonesia don’t have the digital financial infrastructure to manage their own finances while serving customers. Ayoconnect raised again so soon after the initial close of its Series B because it was growing rapidly and also secured important strategic partnerships after receiving its BI license. Rost said the new capital will strengthen Ayoconnect’s balance sheet and prepare it for future growth over the next few years. The platform now serves 200 API customers, including large banks, financial institutions, tech unicorns and fintechs, and offers more than 4,000 embedded finance products. Its APIs are cover two categories: open banking APIs and payment services APIs, with the goal of building the most complete open finance stack in Southeast Asia. Some examples of financial services that Ayoconnect’s clients have launched include the aforementioned direct debit, embedded finance (it partnered with PT. Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), the state-owned operator of railways in Indonesia) to launch new ticketing and productivity features in the KAI Access mobile app, which enables users to buy cellphone credits, internet data subscriptions and electricity tokens). It also partnered with Bank Syariah, Indonesia’s largest Islamic bank, to add new digital and mobile capabilities with the goal of greater financial inclusion and economic growth among its customers. Other Southeast Asian startups in the open finance space include Brick, Finverse, Brankas and Finantier as competitors? One way that Ayoconnect differentiate is by being the only licensed open finance platform in Indonesia, which enables it to offer solutions that aren’t available on the market yet. “While open banking and open finance are reasonably well-established in Europe and the US, the industry is still very young in Southeast Asia but is growing rapidly. In Indonesia, hundreds of millions are embracing new digital services while many more are still without access to basic financial services like bank accounts,” said Rost. “As such, there is huge potential for open finance in the region and a ton of opportunities for the sector to grow further. We’ve been really excited to see the activity in the space and to be playing a role in helping to move the ecosystem forward.” In a statement, SIG Venture Capital’s Akshay Bajaj said the Ayoconnect team “have been running high volume APIs for years and are incredibly well positioned to help customers launch compelling and profitable use cases quickly and securely. As a result of its expanding capabilities, Ayoconnect continues to experience strong and growing demand from banks and API clients. We love their vision and believe they have the potential to transform and enhance the future of payments in Southeast Asia.”