“We took a leap of faith and it paid off”
“I would describe Taufan, the founder and CEO of Amartha, as a living example of “the Indonesian dream”, which seems much more alive than it’s elder aspirational cousin. A true Indonesia patriot, Taufan, is all about creating an impact.”
27 August, 2020
When I first met Taufan, I looked at a true grass-root entrepreneur from humble beginnings having bootstrapped his business for 5 years to serve the large unbanked population in Indonesia’s tier 3+ villages. Six months into our partnership with Amartha, Taufan called me to share two pieces of news – one positive and one negative. We had just hit another monthly record on what I considered at the time small absolute records and Taufan was accepted with a full scholarship to Harvard. This meant he would need to move to Boston for 1 year and manage the business remotely. In my books, both were great news and Taufan succeeded to grow Amartha while being +10,000 miles away.”
Today, Amartha is a market leader in the peer-to-peer lending model designed to help countryside micro-enterprises with access to working capital. With their unique go-to-market strategy and digitization of their offerings, Amartha has helped more than half a million micro-enterprises led by women and continues to reach some of Indonesia’s remotest areas.
Amartha is one of our longest-running partnerships and continues to be nothing short of amazing. For anyone who knows Taufan, his sense of purpose, leadership qualities and desire to improve the community will be hard to miss. We are proud to be able to support Taufan, as a person, to help him achieve his personal mission.
At BEENEXT we are constantly learning and unlearning from all our founders. For me at a personal level and for BEENEXT the learnings we acquire from this partnership is a real eye-opener.