Org Chart: The people fuelling Ajaib’s growth

Org Chart maps out the people at the top of Asia’s most prominent tech companies. Who are the key decision-makers? How are the teams organized? What does it tell us about the company’s priorities? We continue this series with Indonesia-based investment firm Ajaib.

Anderson Sumarli was only 22 years old when he began building Ajaib together with fellow co-founders Yada Piyajomkwan and Winston Lays.

This feat is not entirely unexpected given his early start in stock investment at the age of 9.

In 2021, three years after Ajaib’s launch, the Indonesian firm became the first investment app to achieve unicorn status in Southeast Asia, following a US$153 million fundraise led by DST Global.

Several months prior to this milestone, Ajaib welcomed Mantana Lertchaitawee as its chief of staff, reinforcing the company’s leadership team with another key figure from Thailand – Piyajomkwan is also a Thai national.

Starting out as a mutual fund platform, Ajaib diversified its services by venturing into stock trading in 2020 and adding a crypto business to its expanding portfolio in 2022.

Thiruneeran Murugavel oversees the stock and mutual fund segments, while Colin Choo heads the crypto division.

The investment firm also acquired local securities company Primasia Unggul Sekuritas in 2020 and rebranded it as Ajaib Sekuritas. It was initially led by president director Heliodorus Sungguhria, who was replaced the following year by the firm’s director Juliana.

The board of directors at Ajaib Sekuritas – which oversees daily operations and makes strategic decisions – is supervised by several commissioners led by Sumarli himself.

Between November 2021 and April 2022, Ajaib took a 40% stake in Bank Bumi Arta. However, as reported by IDN Financials, this has since been pared back to 33.45%.

This move aligns with the trend of Indonesian fintech players entering the banking sector via investments in the publicly traded equities of listed banks. Examples of this include Akulaku acquiring Bank Neo Commerce as well as FinAccel – the parent company of BNPL firm Kredivo – acquiring Bank Bisnis Internasional.