JULO, an online lender serving consumers in Indonesia, has raised $80 million in capital from Japan-based Credit Saison.
The new funding is split between $30 million in equity plus a $50 million debt facility. Investors from previous rounds include Skystar Capital, Saratoga Investama, East Ventures, Quona Capital, Central Capital Ventura, MDI Ventures, Gobi Partners, and more.
Kosuke Mori, Senior Managing Executive Officer and Head of Global Business at Credit Saison Co., Ltd., said that credit innovation requires an understanding of local markets to improve financial health of consumers:
“JULO has emerged from the past few years as a resilient and COVID-proven business with more than US$300M disbursements under its belt to date. We look forward to joining hands with them in this next phase of growth to accelerate financial products that will drive truly meaningful change for individuals in Southeast Asia.”
Credit Saison said the investment was part of a move to expand beyond Japan noting that Indonesia is a high growth opportunity. Saison Capital, the VC segment of the company, has a focus on discovering startups with an opportunity to build embedded finance capabilities.
“JULO is already being used by Indonesians throughout their financial lives – 72% of loans are used for improvement purposes such as business capital, home renovation and education. By joining hands with Credit Saison, we have a fresh opportunity to take this significantly further by re-envisioning what the future of traditional lending should look like to truly uplift the region’s most underserved,” said Adrianus Hitijahubessy, CEO & Co-Founder of JULO.
The company said that amidst the consolidation of peer-to-peer lenders in Indonesia, JULO has outperformed expectations. In 2021, lending grew by more than 3X versus the year prior and is currently on track to increase its loan book by more than 5X in the next 12 months.
JULO is one of the first to Fintechs to offer nationwide digital data-driven credit underwriting and risk assessment platform to process consumer credit applications and determine their creditworthiness through a mobile app.
In 2021, JULO launched a digital credit card, which saw 97% of users utilizing non-cash features to top-up e-wallets, top up phone credits, pay utility bills, and process payments on e-commerce sites. Unlike other platforms, JULO is able to facilitate an ongoing credit line after a one-time assessment on its app. Credit decisions can be made in seconds.
The $30 million in equity will be used to advance JULO’s analytics, for product development, marketing, and customer acquisition plans by hiring additional talent across their developer, data scientist and business intelligence teams.
Today, more than 500,000 Indonesians are said to use JULO actively in their daily lives to fund withdrawals, phone credit top-ups, pay bills and more.
JULO is one of the first Fintech lending platforms to receive a full licence from Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK).