Fairbanc, a fintech company focused on Indonesia, secured US $4.8 million in pre-series A fundraising from investors including the Asian Development Bank, Accion Venture Lab, and Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group. Vertex Ventures led the round.
Using the platform provided by Fairbanc, small and medium-sized businesses can obtain short-term finance to purchase high-demand consumer items from well-known companies. 13 other brands, including Unilever, Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Danone, have relationships with the company.
2020 saw US-based Fairbanc raise an undisclosed sum from 500 Global and Michael Sampoerna, the CEO of Sampoerna Strategic and an Indonesian billionaire. The company grew by entering Indonesia after receiving that funding.
In the past year, the company has added over 350,000 merchants. The buy now, pay later option offered by Fairbanc allows about 75,000 of these vendors to buy high-margin goods.
By making use of the extensive merchant networks of its partner consumer brand companies, Fairbanc hopes to grow swiftly.
The additional money is designated for Indonesian expansion and will assist the company in exploring other markets with Unilever, such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
80 percent of Fairbanc’s beneficiaries are unbanked, and almost 70 percent are women entrepreneurs who were able to boost their sales by an average of 35 percent, according to a Unilever survey.
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