Telstra invests in Pinoy e-commerce firm

The venture capital arm of Australian giant Telstra Corp. is investing in C88 Financial Technologies Pte Ltd., which owns and operates the largest consumer financial websites in Indonesia and the Philippines.

The undisclosed investment, coursed through Telstra Ventures, was aimed at helping one of the world’s leading telecommunications and information services companies into increasing its presence in the region’s technology ecosystem.

C88 owns CekAja.com in Indonesia and eCompareMo.com in the Philippines. The firm claims these are the largest financial sites in their respective markets, connecting banks and insurers with consumers across a number of products, including loans, mortgages and insurance.

“This investment round provides us with the funding necessary to scale-up our market leadership in Indonesia and the Philippines. We aim at pushing into mass market branding as we continue to employ our significant scale and focus to help customers save time and money, help our partners cost-competitively on-board new customers at scale, and help our key regulatory partners continue to shape an equitable financial services technology sector rooted in transparency and inclusion,” said J.P. Ellis, co-founder and group CEO of C88.

In partnering with C88, Telstra Ventures managing director Matthew Koertge said in a statement C88 combines across its platforms “a personalized data-driven experience for consumers with easy-to-use web and mobile experiences, as well as back-office infrastructure including call centers and sales distribution networks to complete transactions.”

He said C88 was well ahead in the e-commerce sector. “They offer e-commerce ‘apply now’ functionality to consumers that is directly linked to the issuing bank or insurer, which means it is easy to use and creates a new customer onboarding channel for financial institutions.”

C88 recently completed its Series-B financing round, which included participation from existing investors Monk Hill Ventures and Kejora Ventures. Altitude Partners, Captii Ventures, Jasrag Investments and several other international investment groups and high net-worth individuals from Indonesia and Malaysia also participated in the round.

“We are happy to have Telstra leading this funding round given their significant presence as an enterprise service provider and their growing reputation as an active participant in the region’s technology ecosystem,” Ellis added. Amy R. Remo