License to serve

• 500-backed Indonesian e-commerce startup Bukalapak’s fintech subsidiary, Buka Investasi Bersama (BIB), has sold a 20% stake to Ashmore Asset Management Indonesia for US$3.5 million.
• Ashmore Indonesia is an investment management firm affiliated with Ashmore Group, headquartered in London.
• BIB was launched in October this year. “We hope to provide accessible investment solutions for all, erasing the stigma that investment products are only meant for some parts of the society,” said BIB’s President and CEO Teddy Oetomo.
• BIB was issued a license to sell mutual funds by the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia, making it the first e-commerce platform in Indonesia to receive such a license.

• As part of the partnership, BIB will launch four of Ashmore’s mutual fund products on its platform: equity mutual funds, small and mid-cap mutual funds, flexible-duration fixed income mutual funds, and low-duration dividend-paying fixed income mutual funds.
• Despite the pandemic, the number of mutual funds investors continued to rise, growing 14% per year in the last three years, according to the Indonesian Central Securities Depository (KSEI).
• As of September 2020, the number of investors in this segment reached 2.6 million, with the total recorded managed mutual funds valued at ~US$36.3 billion.
• The partnership is expected to increase accessibility to mutual fund investment options for underserved consumers in Indonesia.
• At its launch, Oetomo shared that BIB aims to register at least 500,000 mutual fund investors in 2021.

A formidable force in pharma

• Founder and CEO of 500-backed mClinica Farouk Meralli was featured in a podcast with Indo Tekno, where he shared how the startup’s mission to solve the fragmented pharmaceutical industry led it to becoming a leading digital health platform in Southeast Asia.

• According to the podcast, mClinica currently connects over 170,000 pharmacy professionals from 40,000 pharmacies across 6 countries in the region, reaching over 150 million patients.
• Having worked at established multinational pharmaceutical companies, Farouk said he learned from experience that the pharmaceutical industry in emerging markets was very fragmented, consisting of small and independent shops that lacked technology and operated largely on pen and paper.
• This fragmentation, he shared, was present all across the supply chain from distributors to retailers. So he got the idea to connect everyone together on a mobile app.
• mClinica’s goal? “What we’re doing is stitching together very large, consolidated industries that exist in the US, but doing them all in a digital first way, and trying to do it in essentially years, as opposed to decades,” he elaborated.
• But why pharmacies? Farouk shared patients in Southeast Asia visit pharmacies almost 12 times a year, as opposed to physicians whom they only visit 1.2 times a year. Thus, pharmacies were identified as critical access points to patients.
• mClinica’s app SwipeRx was born to connect pharmacies on a common platform. This gave “unprecedented access” to stakeholders such as pharmaceutical companies, governments, and non-governmental organizations to reach out to pharmacies.
• Through these connections, the startup has rolled out digital campaigns like education, awareness programs, and data collection on behalf of stakeholders.
• mClinica’s modus operandi is to always work closely with each country’s Ministry of Health and its agencies. “We want to enable the ecosystem, rather than disrupt it completely. That in itself is in its own way, its own disruption,” Farouk revealed.
• This has enabled SwipeRx to become the first digital channel in many countries for pharmacists to get educated. Pharmacists need to get updated annually in order to get their licenses renewed, and this was traditionally done offline, causing professionals to take time off work and travel to take courses. Through mClinica, they can now take them online on the app. “We’ve now become the largest education provider for pharmacy professionals in the region,” Farouk said.
• In large markets such as Indonesia where pharmacies are spread out, it is difficult for stakeholders to reach out to them with information and products. mClinica enables all this work to be done digitally. “And as you can imagine, during COVID, where there’s been even more restriction on in-person visits, the necessity of a platform like this has become even greater,” he added. “In fact, we did much of the digital response for COVID-19 at the pharmacies.”
• Listen to the full podcast here.

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500 Startups is a venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems. In Southeast Asia, 500 Startups invests through the pioneering 500 Southeast Asia family of funds. The 500 Southeast Asia funds have backed over 240 companies across multiple sectors from internet to consumer to deep technology. It continues to connect founders with capital, expertise and powerful regional and global networks to help them succeed.

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