Our journey with Amartha began in 2015 when we met Andi Taufan Garuda Putra, Founder and CEO of Amartha at the Mid Plaza Hotel. Quick to smile and coming from a humble beginning, he seemed just like any other Indonesian but his dreams were big. A true Indonesian patriot, his dream was to help micro-entrepreneurs, the ones who are at the lower pyramid of society.
Taufan bootstrapped Amartha for over 7 years to serve Indonesia’s unbanked population in villages. It was his passion and perseverance that moved us to invest in the company and his dream. We leaped and never looked back.
Building economic resilience through cooperation
In Indonesia, MSMEs account for approximately 99% of all businesses of which 63.35 million are micro-businesses and 783,000 are small businesses. These MSMEs contribute 61% to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP). However, despite being one of the major drivers of Indonesia’s economic growth, the MSME sector largely remains unbanked and underbanked without access to financing owing to limited collateral, income fluctuations and no credit history. Amartha was founded with the aim of empowering these micro-entrepreneurs, specifically women, in rural areas by providing them with access to business capital.
Since its launch in 2010, Amartha has grown to become a leading fintech company in Indonesia. They pioneered peer-to-peer lending for MSMEs in the country. Amartha now is evolving into a platform that fosters sustainable inclusive growth in Indonesia by financing women-led SMEs, mobilizing capital from banks to the grassroots segments, and improving the livelihood of rural communities with lending, investment and payments services.
Registered and supervised by the government-run Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK), Amartha has two platforms, one for individuals and the other for institutions. For Individuals, people can start investing at Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) 100,000 and earn up to 15% per annum investor yields. For institutions, the platform facilitates banks to understand the risks of SME lending and also permits lending to make the microfinance market smarter.
Currently operating in over 35,000 villages, Amartha has distributed over IDR12 trillion in business capital to over 1.7 million women-led SMEs across most of the provinces in Indonesia. The platform hosts over 30 institutional clients who can channel their capital to women-led SMEs. Since its inception, Amartha has been improving the quality of life for these entrepreneurs by driving financial inclusion and financial literacy to build economic resilience.
Expanding community-based network
Despite crossing the millionth female borrower milestone, Taufan still believes that Amartha still has a long way to go. “It’s still small compared to the 30-50 million potential customers that we could serve,” he elaborates. The platform aims to grow and build bridges for digital financial infrastructure for the grassroots communities thereby accelerating the fintech revolution in rural parts of the country, and providing lasting benefits to the economy and communities.
As one of our longest-running partnerships, we have learned a lot from watching Amartha grow and look forward to Taufan achieving his mission by creating shared prosperity for Indonesia.