Meet SEA's latest unicorn. It's Akulaku! 🦄  After raising a $100M Series E from Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), the fintech's valuation is now estimated at $1.5B–$2B.

• SCB's no stranger to tech. Last year, it acquired digital asset exchange Bitkub, and it runs its own food delivery app.
• Akulaku is active in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
  

⏪  Back to the start

In 2014, the founders began with a Bitcoin exchange, inspired by overseas Filipino workers who needed to make remittances.

In 2016, it pivoted and launched buy now, pay later services in Indonesia. It then expanded to loans and wealth management.

• It operates a peer-to-peer lending platform (Asetku) and separately offers everything from daily salary loans to car loans.
• Its wealth management platform is the largest in Indonesia with over 100,000 monthly active users.
  

🏦  Making bank

In 2019, it beefed up its fintech offerings by acquiring a local bank. It joined the digital banking space last year with the launch of its digital banking app, Neobank, in Indonesia.

• Since its launch in March last year, it has hit over 13M users.
• Its monthly transactions increased 10,000% and shot over $200M.
  

🔢  Run the numbers

• Akulaku disbursed over $2.2B in credit in 2021! (FYI, that's 2x its 2020 numbers!)
• Akulaku's H1 2021 revenue was $274M, and it is said to have hit $600M in revenue in 2021.
  

🔭  Looking ahead

Going back to the fresh SCB cash, the funds are to double down on expanding within current markets like Indonesia and Thailand and to new markets in SEA.

Save the date. Akulaku may be going public in the US late this year through a $200M–$300M SPAC.