Ajaib Group Manages To Collect IDR 355 Billion From SoftBank

Ajaib Group (TechinAsia) Online Stock Investment Application

JAKARTA - Ajaib Group announced their success in earning 25 million US dollars (equivalent to Rp355.2 billion) in the Series A round led by Horizon Ventures and Alpha JWC. A number of investors are participating in this round again, such as SoftBank, Insignia Ventures, Ventures Asia, and Y Combinator.

Referring to the official Ajaib Group website, this online investment platform was founded in 2018. It is Anderson Sumarli as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Yada Piyajomkwan who is the Chief Operating Officer (COO). Interestingly, Ajaib Group focuses on the millennial generation and budding investors.

This online investment platform from Indonesia named Ajaib Group runs the fifth largest stock broker in terms of number of trades. The company claims to have millions of users per month.

Now, Ajaib Group has managed to raise US $ 25 million, including the initial round of US $ 2 million in 2019. The penetration rate of stock investment in Indonesia is quite low, with only around 1.6 million stock investors. That means less than 1 percent of Indonesia's population.

In comparison, about 55 percent of the United States has shares, referring to Gallup data, as quoted from TechCrunch.

According to Sumarli and Piyajomkwan, the low level of stock investment in Indonesia is because this is usually done by individuals who have high income, use offline brokers and are able to pay high commissions.

In 2019, Sumarli was frustrated by the lack of investment platforms in Indonesia, where he learned to trade. Ajaib Group was born because it was inspired by companies such as Robinhood (United States) and XP Investimentos (Brazil).

The Ajaib Group stock investment platform was created to become an online stock trading platform. Of course, this will attract new investors and the millennial generation. The Ajaib Group app has a simple user interface, educational and community features.

When they first try stock investment applications, most people prefer to invest in small amounts. The advantage is that in Ajaib, there is no minimum amount you have to buy a certain amount of shares when opening a new account.

"We usually see investors double their investment amount in the second month after investing in Ajaib," said Piyajomkwan.

The Ajaib Group platform includes Ajaib Sekuritas and Ajaib Reksadana for securities and mutual funds. The company reports that Ajaib Sekuritas is the fifth largest stock broker in Indonesia after seven months of launching in June 2020.

The Indonesian government and the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) have launched a new initiative to encourage more stock investment. A number of Series A Ajaib will be used for the #MentorIn Investasi campaign.

This campaign is working with the government to educate millennials about stock investing and balance sheets. This round is also used to expand Ajaib's infrastructure and products.

Ajaib is a potential stock investment platform for the Southeast Asian market. However, in the near future, the company sees a big opportunity in Indonesia.

"In the near future, we will focus on Indonesia because the investment rate in Indonesia is still low and there are still many millennial investors that we can serve," concluded Piyajomkwan.