BRI Ventures, the venture capital arm of Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), has formed a fund called Sembrani Nusantara which has a Rp 300bn ($21.2m) target for its close, Kr Asia reported yesterday.
The unit was launched by BRI in July 2019 with $100m of capital and it has begun investing significantly this year, co-leading the $23.5m first tranche of online lender Investree’s series C round in April and backing cross-border payment platform Nium’s series D round in May.
Sembrani Nusantara will invest in domestic startups at seed and series A stage. Its areas of interest include education, retail, transport, health and agriculture and fisheries.
Nicko Widjaj, BRI Ventures’ CEO, was quoted by DealStreetAsia as saying: “Our focus is to figure out which businesses have strong fundamentals. Fresh funds will be distributed for startups which have the product, can book revenue and have a clear business strategy to achieve profit.”
