Indonesia finally has its fifth unicorn startup. OVO, the second biggest digital payment platform in the country now officially has the unicorn badge.
The firm has been on the list of candidates for the country’s 5th unicorn. It is one of the few startups in the country having valuation above $100 million. According to The 2018 Startup Report by DSResearch team.
Previously, Johnny Widodo (then OVO Director, now CEO of BeliMobilGue), has claimed the title in an interview with CNBC Indonesia. Then at the beginning of 2019, he stated that the company’s valuation is over $1 billion dollar.
After 9 month passed, a source reportedly claimed that the latest funding round put OVO at $2.9 billion valuation. It is more than enough to gain the title of a unicorn which defined as startups above $100 million valuation.
Four Indonesian startups have successfully gained the title. Those startups including Gojek, Traveloka, Tokopedia and Bukalapak.
OVO, and what it means to be a unicorn
Initiated by Lippo Group Indonesia and backed by Tokyo Century Corp, Grab and Tokopedia, OVO is now second only to Gojek’s Gopay. Not only in charge of the online payment and mobile wallet of Grab Indonesia, OVO is now also the primary online payment in Tokopedia.
Those, along with the generous cashbacks and promotions have made the firm recorded trillions of rupiah worth of online transactions. And it keeps on growing still.
A report by App Annie last month stated that OVO has a very high number of downloads and monthly active users in Indonesia.
Rumors also said that it is making a move to stop being Gopay’s shadow through a merge with local firm, DANA. DANA itself is a local digital payment firm backed by Ant Financial and it is now at the fourth place in the country.
Together, the merge might really have a chance to tip off Gopay from the throne.
But unicorn status is not everything for a startup. Many startups has proven that it is not as firm as it looks even after being a unicorn. Bukalapak, for example, has been one of the earliest unicorn in Indonesia. But recently, it was forced to lay off 100 of its employee to cut off cost caused by prolonged deficit.
