The bookeeping app developer for MSMEs, BukuKas, announced Series C funding of $80 million (over 1.1 trilllion Rupiah). Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India have led this round, followed by CapitalG, an investment arm of Google’s parent company. Alphabet Inc, and several angel investors, including Santiago Sosa (Nuvemshop) and Maximilian Bittner (Lazada); also the previous investors, including Hedosophia.
BukuKas’ total investment since two years of operation is estimated to exceed $150 million. The company’s valuation is projected to reach $500 million. Since the series B round announced in May 2021, BukuKas has listed as a centaur.
Rebranding into Lummo
On the occassion, the company also announced the rebranding into Lummo. The TOKKO under BukuKas, was also rebranded into LummoSHOP.
Lummo is taken from the Latin “lumen” which means “light”. This name is said in line with the company’s ambition to be a light for entrepreneurs and brand owners, and make it easier for those with various potentials to build businesses through business-to-customer liaison software (D2C SaaS) services.
Lummo’s Co-founder & CEO, Krishnan Menon said, this rebranding signifies the company’s serious ambition to become a top-of-mind solution for MSMEs. The previous name, BukuKas, was considered less aspirational for the company’s ambitions to reach more MSME business segments.
“We have built a lot of SaaS targeting many merchant segments, considering our users come from various business levels. Thus, our role is to highlight all needs of merchants and brands, previously many apps only focused on consumers. We believe Lummo will grow bigger than BukuKas and TOKKO,” he said in a virtual press conference today (19/1).
Regarding the investment funds, Lummo’s Co-founder & COO, Lorenzo Peracchione said to use it for expanding product offerings in order to serve more MSME entrepreneurs and brands. This strategy can certainly be achieved with more digital talent. Not only that, the company is starting to target expansion into the ASEAN market, which has the same problems as Indonesia.
“ASEAN has great potential and similar needs to Indonesia. However, Indonesia is still our main market, there are still many MSMEs have yet to be explored,” Peracchione said.
LummoSHOP
Lummo was first launched in December 2019 as BukuKas, a bookkeeping app for MSMEs aiming to empower and support more MSMEs towards digitization. Furthermore, in November 2020, the company launched TOKKO, an online store enabler that allows businesses to build direct relationships with customers.
Amidst the high demand of online business competition, MSMEs gain benefits to manage its business better by utilizing the technological solutions by TOKKO, therefore, TOKKO’s (now LummoSHOP) Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) grows up to 11 times from December 2020 to December 2021.
In order to strengthen commitment in driving regional MSMEs digitization, the company also presents TOKKO Semesta, a community program for MSMEs by providing assistance, mentorship, and online business training with a personalization approach that adapts to the needs of MSME business scale online and offline.
The evolution of LummoSHOP strengthens the company’s advantage in technological innovation solutions that connect businesses directly with customers such as chat commerce, catalog integration, custom domains, multi-platform store management, personalization features for business branding, and various other exciting innovations.
The multi-platform store management feature in LummoSHOP makes it easier for MSMEs to manage customer orders from several shopping platforms at once and put LummoSHOP as the center of their online business operations. The service also helps MSMEs to create an official store website, therefore, they can build a brand and unique identity for their online business.
With LummoSHOP’s D2C approach, MSMEs can take advantage of technology solutions such as accessing purchase history, customer base management, and other important analytics to build and develop a strong customer base, without any hindrance from third parties.
After rebranding into LummoSHOP, the company will intensify efforts to support business through a D2C online trading approach, and enable local Indonesian entrepreneurs to manage and develop their business independently and optimally in order to be more competitive.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian