Bukalapak claims it’s on track for $5b in GMV for 2019

Indonesian ecommerce unicorn Bukalapak has released several key figures for the first half of 2019. One of them is its annualized run rate paid gross merchandise value (GMV), which the company claims amounts to US$5 billion.

The above figure is a projection for 2019 that is extrapolated from actual numbers. For comparison, fellow ecommerce giant Shopee – which is present in six other countries besides Indonesia – expected its GMV for 2018 to be around US$9.2 billion to US$9.7 billion.

Tokopedia, a homegrown ecommerce unicorn like Bukalapak, does not disclose GMV figures.

Photo credit: Bukalapak

On average, Bukalapak processes more than 2 million transactions per day. Gross monthly profits for 2019 so far are twice as high compared to December 2018.

Along with more than 4 million merchants on its platform, the company also claims to have more than 2 million small business partners in its Mitra Bukalapak program. Through the program, offline businesses like small roadside kiosks can sell Bukalapak-powered digital goods (e.g., phone credits or electricity tokens) and purchase inventory from distributors on the Bukalapak platform.

Most recently, the company unveiled a new feature called BukaGlobal, which lets consumers outside of Indonesia shop on the Bukalapak platform.

“We won’t stop here,” said Achmad Zaky, the founder and CEO of Bukalapak, in a letter addressed to the press. “Some of our next goals include creating more jobs, transforming technology to give more people access to financial services, ‘leveling up’ more small kiosks in more Indonesian cities, and helping the government make e-government a reality.”

Bukalapak attained unicorn status after an undisclosed funding round in January 2018. Its most recent funding, a US$50 million round, came earlier this year from Line parent Naver and Korea’s Mirae Asset.