JAKARTA, 14 September 2016 - KUDO, Indonesia’s leading assisted e-commerce start-up has secured an 8-digit funding led by EMTEK Group. The management asserts that the funds will be used to strengthen KUDO’s mission to empower more Indonesians through technology, by expanding the start-up’s reach across rural and urban Indonesia.

Albert Lucius, CEO of KUDO, stated, “The fund enabled us to establish an indisputable agent network presence across suburban and rural areas across Indonesia. From Sabang to Merauke, our agents will be the gateway to the world of e-commerce.” He further added, “Today is the time. We now are strongly positioned to create a dent in the way traditional customers and SME businesses operate in Indonesia. Using our technology, we allow millions of underserved, unbanked, and less tech-savvy Indonesians to finally able to transact online.”

KUDO, which currently has delivered access to more than 1 millions of Indonesians who have never shopped online before, will continue to open opportunities for the Indonesian unbanked and less tech-savvy to enjoy the benefits of ecommerce by using cash. In addition, the company continues to expand its product offerings across fin-tech products: from insurance, multi-finance, all the way to installments.

Currently, KUDO has currently empowered more than 150,000 productive Indonesians to be KUDO agents. Through KUDO platform, agents now has opportunity to start a digital store. The agents can then earn additional income by selling many different products, from e-commerce products, cellphone balance top-ups, utility payments, transportation tickets, all the way to financial services.

This is made possible largely because of its innovative business and payment model, which is in turn an answer to the unique conditions of the country. Its 250 million strong population is spread across an archipelago of 17,000 islands, making logistics and cash-on-delivery major hurdles for e-commerce to fully bloom across Indonesia. At this point, KUDO - with its cashpayment system and reliance on agent-customer trust to push transactions - is the nation’s strongest answer to bring the rural, unbanked and less tech-savvy to the modern economy by providing value of trust, last-mile delivery and accessible payment points.

Agung Nugroho, COO of KUDO, emphasized, “We want to empower 1,000,000 digital entrepreneurs and enables millions of Indonesians to shop online for the first time by 2018.” He added, “We strongly believe in our execution capability in Indonesia. Our strategic partnership with the nation’s key rural-banking player, BTPN and key retail & distributor partners will enable us to quickly achieve this mission.”

KUDO was founded in early 2015 with the aim of creating an accessible platform promoting inclusive economic growth. Its business model provides the unbanked and non-tech savvy access to millions of products, with transparent pricing and the opportunity to earn commission for each transaction. In less than two years, KUDO managed to process tens of thousands of transactions worth few billions rupiah per day.

According to Jokowi during Fintech Fest, only 21.8% of Indonesia population is bankable. This creates massive opportunity for Kudo to address the remaining unbankable population. Kudo delivers social impact through technology and right now is the leading player in this category.

In order to create a world-class technology for enabling Indonesian productive mass market, KUDO managed to attract Indonesian world-class talents coming from many different expertise. KUDO has just recently on-boarded Sukan Makmuri, a Silicon Valley 20+ years veteran and was the CEO of Kaskus, to be its Chief Technology Officer. Through its mission, KUDO aims to attract more Indonesians tech diaspora to go back to Indonesia and develop Indonesia digital economy.

Alvin Sariatmadja from EMTEK said that current investors have doubled down. This round is also participated by existing investors which are East Ventures, 500 Startups, Singapore Press Holdings, IMJ Investment Partners, and Skystar Capital.