[Funding alert] Lummo secures $80M in Series C round from Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India

Lummo, previously known as BukuKas, on Wednesday said that it raised $80 million in its Series C funding round led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India. 

The funding round saw participation from a few global tech and ecommerce investors such as CapitalG, the independent growth fund of Google parent company Alphabet; NuvemShop CEO Santiago Sosa; and former Lazada CEO Max Bittner; also participated in this round. 

“We are delighted to welcome our new investors to support Lummo’s journey to digitise and accelerate the growth of MSMEs,” said Krishnan Menon, CEO and Founder of Lummo in a statement. “The backing we’ve secured shows the confidence investors have in our team and product to become the preferred partner to merchants and MSMEs, as well as their conviction in the region’s rapidly growing digital economy."

Lummo is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup seeking to utilise the fund to accelerate the business growth of MSMEs in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. 

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Launched in December 2019, as Bukukas, Lummo was founded by Krishnan and Lorenzo Peracchione. It is an app-based book-keeping software for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

Later expanded its business by launching TOKKO, its flagship product, an online direct-to-consumer commerce builder in November 2020.

This has also been rebranded to LummoSHOP as it cements its status as a leading software solution to entrepreneurs and brands in unlocking and maximising their business potential through online commerce. This product's Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) grew 11 times from December 2020 to December 2021, said the company in a statement.

“We offer entrepreneurs and brands the opportunity to sell directly to their customers and enable them to build a strong and distinctive brand online using LummoSHOP,” said the founder. 

Indian born Krishnan who is now based in Jakarta, Indonesia, added that the D2C approach enabled by the company’s SaaS stack will help merchants and MSMEs in establishing strong relationships with their customers and help them face the intense competition in the online market today.

As of May 2021, BukuKas has onboarded 6.3 million businesses, and has three million monthly active users. According to the company, its annualised book-keeping transaction volume is $25.9 billion. By the end of 2022, BukuKas aims to touch more than 20 million SMEs in the region, said Krishnan at TechSparks 2021. 

It launched BukuKasPay in April 2021 for businesses to pay suppliers online, and also accept digital payments via different apps. It discontinued this service from November 2021. 

Commenting on the investment John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global added, “We are thrilled to be a part of Lummo’s mission to empower aspiring entrepreneurs and brands to accelerate their growth and to serve their customers by giving them the best technology and partner solutions. Digital-led economic growth, especially in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, is a key investment focus for us.”

He further explained that “We have seen Lummo’s rapid growth over the past two years, and are proud to see the company’s continuous improvement and innovation to enable MSMEs to grow in online commerce. We look forward to supporting Lummo’s journey as it enters its next growth phase.”

Along with the rebranding to LummoSHOP, the company aims to strengthen its direct-to-consumer (D2C) product offerings through technological innovations like chat commerce, catalogue integration, custom domains, multiple platform management, personalised features for branding and many more innovations in the pipeline.

With the multiple platform management feature, merchants will be able to use LummoSHOP to manage all their customer orders from multiple shopping platforms, making it the one place from where they can manage all their online commerce operations. It would also help merchants to create their own official website that can be customised, giving them the power to build their own unique brand and identity. 

Its D2C model ensures a stronger relationship between the merchant and the customer with no third party sitting in the middle. The solution will allow merchants to access their customers’ records, purchase history as well as other analytics - all of which are crucial for building and growing an engaged customer base.