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Indonesia is another gathering place for financial startups. Since mid-2017, Indonesia became a popular market for Chinese study groups and startups that had been trying to take a slice of the Indonesian financial market.
CashCash positioned itself clearly right from the start: a platform to recommend and distribute financial products. CashCash recently received a multi-million dollar Series A financing, from Creation Partners Capital as lead-investor while Zhen Fund, Zero2IPO and former shareholder Rong360 as co-investors. Previously, CashCash had also received Pre-A financing from Rong360 and Plum Ventures.
Founder and CEO Lin Yi told KrASIA’s parent company that CashCash was launched end of 2017, and it took only 10 days to be the most downloaded local financial app on Google Play store in Indonesia. The app gradually accumulated a platform for financial products with good customer service and a community to provide comments and comparisons among financial products.
Indonesia has the largest population and economy in Southeast Asia. It is also a young market with more than half of the 266 million people under 35 years old. Smartphone users have exceeded 100 million, yet the credit card penetration rate is less than 5%, hence creating favorable conditions for the Fintech market. Leading companies such as Akulaku, Rupah Plus, Kredit Pintar, Pinjam Yuk, and WeShare have established a firm foothold in the country.
CashCash’s app has gathered more than 60 Indonesian online loan platforms thus far. Lin said that the user experience has gradually improved over time. After uploading credit information on CashCash, the whole application of loan repayment can be completed on CashCash without having to submit loan applications in other platforms. This provides convenience to users and reduces the risks of customer loss. Currently, CashCash’s monthly active users reached 600K-700K.
Indonesia’s financial market is competitive, how can CashCash stand out? Lin said that CashCash’s strength lies service and community engagement, especially during pre-lending.
“Many platforms only care about the service during and after the loan, no one had paid attention to pre-lending services,” Lin said. CashCash has a team of people to perform a full beta testing before the product goes live. This is to ensure that the loan process is smooth and reliable. Furthermore, CashCash provides a variety of loan strategies to help local users to discuss and have a comprehensive understanding of financial products.
In addition, CashCash is expanding into other related financial services such as banks and e-wallets. They are also preparing to enter the Philippines, India and Vietnam market.
In recent years, due to the intensive competition of many inclusive financial platforms, the Indonesian local government has gradually introduced relevant policies to regulate the industry. Lin believes that there are still rooms for improvements for Indonesia’s banking and loan systems, and proper supervision is beneficial to the market. Lin added that the funds this round will be used to continue to improve the platform system, increase traction and data accumulation by expanding into the credit card, banking and insurance sectors.
CashCash team has many years of experience in the Internet market in Indonesia and has accumulated a decent understanding of the local users, products, and market. CEO Lin has 7 years of experience in Indonesian market development, serving in Huawei and Baidu in Indonesia. CPO Song has 6 years of experience in mobile internet products and participating in and designed products such as Q Game Center and App Game Channel. VP Xia Xiao graduated from Durham University in the UK, has 6 years of overseas experience and has helped Boya Interactive to bring in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue in Indonesia.
Zhou Wei, the founding partner of Creation Partners Capital, said that in the field of Fintech, they have always preferred platform companies with technical capabilities. The listing of Rong360 (which was invested by Creation Partners on the NYSE) has proven the feasibility and commercial value of the AI financial selection. CashCash is a technology platform operator similar to Rong360. It provides rapid development of financial products for Southeast Asia and overseas. It has developed rapidly and the team has many years of overseas experience. Creations Partner Capital is optimistic about CashCash overseas plans and will provide full support.
