Ovo CEO talks company strategy, investments, rumors

Indonesian digital payments player Ovo is undoubtedly a newsmaker in the country’s digital ecosystem. The company has grown rapidly in the past year and it has achieved many important milestones: it acquired lending platform Taralite and online investment platform Bareksa, invested in two tech startups, and rolled out the PayLater feature.

Ovo recently made headlines when Indonesia’s former IT minister, Rudiantara, announced that the company has entered the unicorn club as its valuation hit US$1 billion. According to the 2019 Indonesian Fintech Report by Daily Social, Ovo is the most popular e-wallet platform among Indonesians and it secured the second spot as the most used digital wallet in the country.

Ovo CEO Jason Thompson / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

The tallest trees catch the most wind as Ovo has been in the media spotlight in the past few months because of merger issues with a competitor, Ant Financial-backed Dana. Most recently, its parent company, Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group, reportedly sold 70% of its stake in Ovo due to the latter’s large expenditure.

Responding to the rumors, Ovo’s CEO, Jason Thompson, remained neutral and said that he doesn’t really think of market speculation and wants to focus on further growing the business instead. With a dynamic competition in the Indonesian fintech landscape today, it is likely that we’ll see more of Ovo in many local and international news outlets in the future.

KrAsia recently met with Thompson at the 2019 Wild Digital Conference in Jakarta, and he discussed the company’s strategies going forward.

Looking back at what Ovo has achieved this year, what stage is the company at now?

Firstly, we are genuinely humbled to be recognized as the fifth unicorn. The whole team was really excited, and this accolade is great for business. It shows external investment, how rapid the growth of fintech in Indonesia has been, and we are the only true fintech unicorn. But honestly, we feel that we just started.

However, it also forces a lot of pressure on us because the expectations are higher than ever – from Bank Indonesia, the government, and more importantly, from our customers. Looking back at this year, we’ve had a really tough but successful year. Our organization is growing, we really cemented ourselves as the number one payment platform in the country, we developed new services, and we’ve had a great year working with Grab and Tokopedia.

We’ve got some great metrics as well. In 2019, we had more people transact with us, thanks to the many partnerships we created in the ecosystem. Our annual transactions were 27.7 times higher than the previous year. We have increased total payment value by 18.5 times and in-store value facilities by 6.8 times. Ovo’s monthly active users grew 400% per annum this year.

I believe that financial literacy and inclusion have five challenges. The first is to get people to register on the platform, the second for them to top up, and the third is to encourage them to pay with our platform. The fourth and the fifth are to make them re-top up and, finally, pay again with the same app. Now that people store their money with Ovo, we believe that we can drive financial literacy for savings, investments, and others.

What is Ovo’s focus in 2020?

The three focus areas for me in 2020 include accelerating growth for lending – most of that will focus on merchants and some on consumer lending. The number two priority is to execute with Bareksa for e-investment. I think we can learn from China’s success story with digital investment players like Yu’e Bao and see how we can execute it here in Indonesia.

Number three is a focus on insurance via a partnership with Prudential. We’re still developing insurance products and expect to release them next year. So, we are moving from payments into financial services this and next year.