Mekar Encourages Indonesians to Invest in and Support Local Products and Businesses

PRESS RELEASE

Jakarta, November 16, 2017 – Mekar (PT Mekar Investama Sampoerna), a fast-growing Indonesian fintech company, launched a new crowdfunding feature today. This new feature will allow the 7 million entrepreneurs and 114 million people working in 58 million units of MSMEs in Indonesia to have better access to finance.

It is a well known fact that for many Indonesian entrepreneurs and MSMEs, growing their business remains a struggle, especially when it comes to financing. Most still find bank loans hard to get.

Mekar offers a solution to this problem with its new crowdfunding feature, now available on Mekar’s website, Mekar.id. Crowdfunding, as the name suggests, is the process of getting a large crowd of investors to pay a small amount of money and invest in an innovative product or business.

With crowdfunding, small businesses can find their way to people that have the cash that can help them grow bigger or reach a wider market. For the investors, crowdfunding is a good way to invest very early on in products, projects or businesses that have the potential to become big in the future, and to support businesses owned and run by fellow Indonesians.

“Indonesia is full of great entrepreneurs. Many are innovative business that also have a social impact. Mekar’s Crowdfunding service finds them, makes them visible and helps them with funding,” says Mekar’s CEO, Thierry Sanders.

Mekar’s new crowdfunding solution has advantages over most platforms out there. The businesses that are seeking crowdfunding through Mekar are vetted so that only those that have been in operation for at least one year and have shown good performance or have a production system in place can set up a campaign.

For the investors, this means the businesses in Mekar carry less risks than those in other crowdfunding platforms where all businesses of any kind can seek funding.

“Mekar’s new crowdfunding service helps Indonesian people participate in the financing of small business growth and innovation,” says Irawan Kadarman, President Commissioner of PT Mekar Investama Sampoerna.

A business that wants to raise funding using Mekar’s crowdfunding feature can choose from two fudraising schemes: Revenue Sharing and Pre-order. In the Revenue Sharing scheme, investors who support a campaign of a business receive periodic payments based on a percentage of the latter’s sales in exchange for the money pledged.

Small businesses can also use the crowdfunding feature in Mekar to find buyers for their products. Investors can support these MSMEs by placing a pre-order for the product, sometimes for less than the retail price. By doing so, the investors are helping the MSMEs finance the production of a large batch of products.

Charles Nagy, owner and founder of BikinBot, one of the businesses that are currently running a campaign on Mekar’s crowdfunding portal, says, “As a start-up, BikinBot needs to generate sales. MEKAR’s crowdfunding platform is an excellent choice which allows us to generate pre-order sales quickly and effectively. Working with MEKAR’s staff has been an great experience, and we feel they are doing everything to make us successful in our crowdfunding campaign efforts. BikinBot is Indonesian based which designs and manufactures 3D Printers. We recommend any other Indonesian based start-up that is interested in generating sales to engage with MEKAR.”

For more information, visit https://mekar.id/crowdfunding, or contact:

Randy Gunadi
Marketing Director
randy.gunadi@mekar.id
Whatsapp : 08112881540

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Mekar (PT Mekar Investama Sampoerna)

Mekar is a fintech company specializing in peer-to-peer lending. Using an online platform, https://mekar.id, Mekar connects Indonesian entrepreneurs and small business owners in need of financing with investors who are looking for a safe, profitable and socially responsible investment alternative. Mekar offers peer-to-peer lending (microlending) and crowdfunding services.

Mekar is formally known as PT Mekar Investama Sampoerna. Mekar was founded with the aim of increasing financial inclusion among MSMEs in Indonesia.

*This press release article also published on Pressrelease.id portal