While running his design-centric online furniture startup Fabelio in Jakarta, Krishnan M Menon used to travel to rural Indonesia a lot.

During these trips, he would visit many Usaha Mikro Kecil Menengah  (UMKMs) or MSMEs located in Tuban, Cirebon and Jepara.

These visits made him realise that while the archipelago has 56 million MSMEs, the technology revolution was only happening in the “premium” Indonesia. The sector and the country would benefit if these businesses were digitised and included in the financial ecosystem.

“I started brainstorming on how to support and accelerate the process of digitalisation. I discussed this idea with Lorenzo Peracchione, my long-time friend and former boss at Lazada. And this led to the birth of BukuKas,” Menon tells e27.

Going big? Then Go e27 Pro.

Launched in December 2019, BukuKas helps owners of MSMEs understand and manage their financial flows effectively with a free-to-use digital ledger mobile app.

“Starting BukuKas reflects our dream to help millions of business owners, who form the backbone of the real Indonesia,” Menon remarks.

Menon, a serial entrepreneur, and Peracchione, who has previously worked in Luxola, had come very close to starting a business together several times, but their plans didn’t materialise. Now, with BukuKas, they found a vision that was very relevant to both of them personally.

“Helping small businesses is a very personal mission for me since I grew up in a family that ran a small agricultural business. I saw my father experiencing problems managing cashflows and collecting credit first-hand,” says Peracchione, narrating the story behind BukuKas.

While Menon has in the past built Freecharge, besides Fabelio, Peracchione helped cosmetics e-commerce startup Luxola to launch its Thailand business from scratch. Following its acquisition by LVMH-owned Sephora, Peracchione built its mobile business in Southeast Asia from the ground up.

Book-keeping made easy

Many small businesses in Indonesia still traditionally manage their finances using pen and paper. Furthermore, they struggle to get visibility and have no clue about the profits they earn.

The BukuKas app provides a simple book-keeping solution that can record sales, expenses, accounts receivable, and debt. It can also send reminders to their customers to pay back.

“The app allows small business owners to save 40 minutes a day as they can now avoid tedious manual calculations and reconciliation,” Menon boasts. “Our users say they manage to improve their profits by 10-20 per cent every month as they manage their expenses better and have an easier time collecting money from customers.”

The startup is now working on several new features that will help MSMEs improve sales, financial services and stock planning.

COVID-19, a blessing in disguise

As of April 2020, BukuKas has signed up over 250,000 merchants. The number has increased by 50 per cent since the outbreak of the pandemic.

“Offline businesses relying on retail outlets have been hit hard by restrictions imposed in light of the pandemic, with several claiming revenue drops exceeding 60 per cent. As a response, small merchants are trying to shift their focus to online channels, especially informal ones like Instagram and WhatsApp,” says Peracchione.

“BukuKas makes it easier to keep track of business activities across different online channels and facilitates remote business management, as users can access and manage bookkeeping anytime, anywhere via mobile,” Peracchione explains.

Also Read: Indonesia’s logistics aggregator Shipper secures US$20M Series A led by Naspers

One key lesson that COVID-19 has taught the founder-duo is that they need to invest more time and resources into understanding and helping merchants better.

“We see our merchants affected by the virus outbreak. To help them out, we have started promoting their business on our social media channels and  conducting English classes for free to up-skill them,” says Menon.

Recently, BukuKas raised undisclosed funding from Surge, a scale-up programme run by Sequoia India; Credit Saison; and 500 Startups. It also has the backing of over 20 angel investors, including Happy Fresh CEO Guillem Segarra, and Kopi Kenangan founders Edward Tirtanata and James Prananto.

“The Surge team truly helps entrepreneurs build great companies. From guiding us through setting up our fundamentals right, to helping us execute on a day-to-day basis be it on hiring, strategy, product or pretty much anything we ask for, to exposing us to incredible entrepreneurs like Tokopedia Co-founder William Tanuwijaya, so we can be inspired and learn from them,” concludes Menon.

—

Image Credit: BukuKas

The post BukuKas makes book-keeping easy for Indonesian MSMEs to save money and time appeared first on e27.