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Earlier today, Indonesia-based credit tech startup SkorLife announced that it raised a US$2.2 million pre-seed funding round from a group of high-profile investors.
AC Ventures participated in the round, which also included Saison Capital and angel investors like all the founders of OneCard; Advance.ai’s Jefferson Chan; KoinWorks’ Will Arifin of KoinWorks; Lummo’s Krishnan Menon; Evermos’ Arip Tirta of Evermos; Qoala’s Harshet Lunani; Init-6’s Willy Arifin; Lummo’s Krishnan Menon; Evermos’ Arip Tirta; Qoala’s Harshet Lunani; Init-6’s Achmad Zaky; and executives from Northstar Group, Stripe, Google, Boston Consulting Group, Gojek and CreditKarma.
The fresh capital will be allocated to product development, making new hires, and driving awareness.
SkorLife is unique in the local market because it is building what stakeholders refer to as a ‘category builder’ in the realm of consumer credit. On a consumer and institutional level, creditworthiness is extremely under-utilized in Indonesia. To date, banks and other financial institutions rely primarily on ‘income worthiness’ when it comes to deciding whether or not they can offer lines of credit to borrowers.
To address this, SkorLife aims to give control back to consumers by having them take a more active role in building and maintaining their credit scores.
The startup has made a credit builder application for people to access and monitor their credit scores, credit reports, and other relevant data from credit bureaus – instantly and for free. SkorLife also offers a mechanism for helping consumers dispute inaccurate information on their credit reports.
For consumers who already have a credit history, SkorLife will help them access and improve their scores. For those who do not yet have a credit history (think fresh graduates, freelancers, content creators, etc), the app will help them get started building their scores. In both scenarios, SkorLife offers AI-driven, personalized tips to help users unlock broader access to credit.
With no direct competitors in the market, SkorLife is operating in a ‘greenfield’ space. Indonesia currently has 92 million credit records in its bureaus. Meanwhile, most Indonesians currently do not have access to this information. SkorLife expects around 2.5 million New to Credit (NTC) users per year going forward.
The startup’s co-founders are prominent veterans in the local technology ecosystem
CEO Ongki Kurniawan is the former country head at Stripe Indonesia. Prior to that, he was Executive Director at Grab, Managing Director at LINE, and held senior positions at XL Axiata, BCG, and more. Meanwhile, COO Karan Khetan is a co-founder at 5x, BookMyShow Southeast Asia, Lamudi, former MD at Rocket Internet, and more.
“SkorLife is the first-ever credit builder in Indonesia and while these are still early days, it is already a category-defining company. Our resolve is fortified and validated by the collective confidence of our early investors. With their networks and know-how, SkorLife is well-positioned to lead the charge of consumer credit in the nation,” explained Ongki. “Through our service, individuals will be able to build and improve their credit profiles with features such as personalized tips and advice. We will also help bring more NTC users into the fold.”
Karan added, “We solve a genuine problem. We’ve collected feedback from hundreds of users, and we see a clear gap in the credit life cycle in Indonesia. SkorLife is truly the only consumer-focused, free, instant, and mobile credit monitoring service. Currently, Indonesians are not aware of loans they have or plan to have relative to their creditworthiness. Access to the ‘right’ credit will be a big part of the conversation moving forward. We believe SkorLife will be instrumental in driving financial literacy and inclusion in the nation.”
Currently, SkorLife has a headcount of 19 staffers, with plans to increase to 40. The first, private iteration of the app (alpha) has been downloaded more than 3,000 times and is growing by 50 to 60 new users per day, organically. These private adoption stats surpassed SkorLife’s internal target by more than 7x. The company will soon make its app available for download to the public.
Adrian Li, founder and managing partner of AC Ventures, expressed his confidence.
“This opportunity in Indonesia is massive. Even as the space is relatively untapped, the consumer credit market size is already north of US$185 billion. That said, it has always been a challenge here because lenders have never been able to draw truly holistic conclusions about borrowers based on limited and fragmented information,” said Adrian. “But with these data troves just waiting to be unlocked and used meaningfully in a consumer-facing app, we are excited about SkorLife’s vision and mission of putting people back in charge of their financial futures.”
He added, “We also believe in backing strong founders early on. The unfair advantages that Ongki and Karan bring to the table are what make AC Ventures so keen to be in SkorLife’s corner from the start.”
Source: SkorLife
