Mekari, an Indonesia-based software-as-a-service platform, has raised US$50 million in a series E funding round led by Money Forward and participated by several of the company’s other existing investors.
The investment comes just over a year after the company closed its US$18 million series D round, which was also led by Money Forward. It was participated by EV Growth and MidPlaza Holding.
Mekari founders
In an exclusive conversation with Tech in Asia, Mekari founder and CEO Suwandi Soh said the fresh capital will be used to expand the company’s team and capabilities across product and engineering, sales, and marketing. It will also fuel its foray into a new domain, which he describes as “contextual financial services.”
The new business verticals within the realm of financial services will serve as an additional layer of products on top of Mekari’s extensive suite of existing SaaS offerings, which includes HR, accounting, tax, customer relationship management, and employee benefits.
For example, Suwandi says the company will be able to leverage data it obtains from its Talenta payroll platform to offer earned-wage access to employees, as well as employee loans.
Suwandi says Mekari is on a positive trajectory towards its path to profitability. He estimates that the company will be able to turn a profit in the next two to four years, depending on how aggressively the company wants to invest in its future growth.
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Founded in 2015 by the name of Sleekr, the company rebranded itself as Mekari following successive M&A actions with four SaaS peers, including HR startup Talenta, tax platform KlikPajak, and accounting startup Jurnal.
As Mekari looks to expand into new verticals, Suwandi says he will be “open” to executing more inorganic strategies, and may even extend the current funding round to finance such deals, should the opportunity arise.
“We have two products in the pipeline which we are building in-house. But Mekari’s history shows that we have always been open-minded towards possible inorganic growth opportunities. And we have always had good relations with other SaaS players in the market. So the option is always open,” he says.
In recent years, the SaaS sector has seen tremendous growth in Indonesia. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, the market size of Indonesia’s SaaS business is expected to grow at 25% CAGR to reach US$800 million in 2023.
In line with this trajectory, Mekari has also recorded an 11x growth over the past four years. It currently has more than 35,000 clients and 800,000 active users, primarily from MSMEs.
Editing by Miguel Cordon
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