Bukalapak secures funding from South Korea’s Shinhan at $2.5b valuation

Indonesian unicorn Bukalapak continues to attract strong international interest as South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group becomes its latest investor in a deal that valued the ecommerce firm at over US$2.5 billion.

Bukalapak co-founder and CEO Achmad Zaky with a Bukalapak partner/ Photo credit: Bukalapak

Shinhan’s investment banking unit, Shinhan GIB, joined Bukalapak’s series F round with an undisclosed amount of investment. Indonesian media conglomerate Emtek and other existing investors also participated in the round.

The fresh funding will support the execution of Bukalapak’s long-term plan and business strategy, the company said in a statement Friday.

Previously, the ecommerce company had received funds from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and China’s Ant Financial, among others. In January, it secured US$50 million from Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund.

Bukalapak recently announced that it’s on track to reach US$5 billion in gross merchandise value in 2019. It also claimed that it achieved a 3x increase in gross profits in the first half of 2019 compared to the same period last year.

According to a recent joint report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, Indonesia’s internet economy grows up to more than 40% a year and is likely to hit US$133 billion by 2025.

Bukalapak has set its sights beyond ecommerce, which represented only 3% of total retail spend in Indonesia in 2017, and launched its offline strategy Mitra Bukalapak and international initiative BukaGlobal this year.

The company claims to have 2 million small-business partners on its Mitra Bukalapak program, which lets small offline businesses sell Bukalapak-powered digital goods.

BukaGlobal, on the other hand, lets consumers outside of Indonesia shop on the Bukalapak platform.