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PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (Telkom) has expanded its investment in the digital business following its Kredivo, a credit-based digital financial payment platform as a portfolio startup of MDI Ventures, has recently announced its plans to become a public company. Kredivo's big plan will begin with a merger with a subsidiary of Victory Park Capital (VPC), a global investment company headquartered in Chicago. With an equity value that is predicted to reach USD 2.5 billion, Kredivo is entering a new era as a unicorn.
MDI Ventures, a subsidiary of Telkom, has been funding Kredivo since 2018, followed by a second funding the following year with Telkomsel Mitra Innovation (TMI). The investment value at that time was around 8% of the total first round funding conducted by MDI Ventures. With the predicted value of Kredivo's equity after becoming a public company, the investment value of MDI Ventures in Kredivo is expected to generate significant capital gains.
Telkom's Strategic Portfolio Director Budi Setyawan Wijaya said, “TelkomGroup welcomes and is proud of Kredivo's big plan to become a public company as well as a unicorn. This is the sweet fruit of Telkom's investment strategy and commitment in digital business which is run through MDI Ventures and TMI is already on the track. Not only potential capital gains that we might be able to obtain, the most important thing that is expected from this investment is of course the synergy value with MDI's startup portfolio will support the development of Telkom's digital business, especially in the platform and services domain." One of the synergy values that have been implemented between TelkomGroup and Kredivo is the use of Telkomsel's big data in credit scoring.
Kredivo's presence as a unicorn in the near future will add to the list of MDI Ventures' success in investing, where previously Nium, an MDI portfolio startup, has also become the first B2B payments unicorn from Southeast Asia with a valuation of over US$1 billion. "Hopefully Kredivo's successful steps can be followed by local startups from Indonesia who were born as new unicorns, and TelkomGroup through MDI will continue to strive to support this realization. In the near future, hopefully, other MDI portfolio startups will conduct IPOs on domestic and foreign exchanges," said Budi.
MDI Ventures is a subsidiary of TelkomGroup which is engaged in corporate venture capital with its business activities consisting of investing – synergy – portfolio management – value creation and fundraising. In 2020, MDI Ventures invested in 15 new startups spread across 4 countries, so that a total of MDI has invested in more than 50 startups in Indonesia and globally in more than 12 countries. In 2021, MDI will focus on investing in fintech, agritech, logistics, health, new retail, and deep tech. Not only looking for startups that have the potential to generate capital gains, but MDI has the task of finding startups that are able to encourage TelkomGroup's digital business and BUMN through synergy value.
MDI Ventures CEO Donald Wihardja stated, “Investing in Kredivo is one of the most ideal examples of returns for our investment. Kredivo not only succeeded in providing capital gains many times over for our investment, but also succeeded in producing various successful synergy projects, providing value to Telkom and accelerating Kredivo's performance. Therefore, MDI continues to support efforts to establish a digital business ecosystem in Telkom and SOEs by using solutions that have been proven by startups that MDI has invested in, such as Kredivo.”