This Indonesian social commerce firm digitalized ‘arisan’ and grew revenue 3x

Nadya Pramitha, a homemaker residing in Jakarta, has been participating in her family’s arisan activities since 2016. Apart from being a family tradition, arisan is seen as a way to save money.

Arisan, a traditional rotating savings and credit scheme in Indonesia, involves a group of people coming together to contribute a sum of money. A distinctive feature of this activity is the regular gatherings, typically held monthly for a set period.

“Our family holds arisan to maintain our bond and also to make our gatherings more fun,” says Pramitha.

In each meeting, participants will take part in a lottery to choose the winner, who takes home the pool of money. Each member can only win the lottery once in an arisan period, so everyone will eventually get the prize, making this activity an effective money-saving method. The cycle ends when all members have won.

This get-together is especially popular among homemakers aged 30 to 45 and can be found in both metropolitan areas and lower-tier cities.

Mapan team / Photo credit: Mapan

Indonesia-based Mapan takes the concept of arisan a step further by combining fintech and social commerce. It’s digitalizing this tradition through a mobile app that allows users to use the arisan concept to buy products instead of just saving money.

The startup was acquired by Gojek in 2017 with the intention of expanding the super app’s reach in rural areas.

Mapan has since spun off to become an independent startup after raising US$15 million in a series A funding round led by Patamar Capital and Astra Digital Internasional in June last year.

“After receiving series A funding from other investors, GoTo is now one of our investors, no longer the owner. Now our funding comes from fundraising,” says Mapan CEO Ardelia Apti.

Apti, who was appointed to lead the company after the funding, says that Mapan’s revenue grew more than 3x from 2021 to 2022. She previously headed offline payments for Gojek’s e-wallet GoPay.

In an interview with Tech in Asia, she explains that the growth was driven by the expansion of use cases from Mapan’s product catalog, which now offers a wide range of categories beyond household products. At the beginning of 2022, the firm had 300 stock-keeping units (SKUs), but the figure has grown to 1,000.

Mapan also expanded to the provinces of East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara at the end of 2022, widening its reach beyond the Java island, where 85% of its penetration is concentrated. The startup also has a presence in Bali, Sumatra, and Sulawesi.

Not your usual social commerce

Mapan was founded in 2009 as Ruma, a platform that enabled mom and pop shops, known as warungs, to sell phone credits. In 2015, it pivoted to launch the arisan platform.

Accelerating profitability

Tackling high logistics costs

Reaching 10 million households