Indonesia-based Amartha Nusantara Raya (Amartha) has raised $100 million from San Francisco-based investment firm Community Investment Management (CIM), the fintech firm said in statement on Friday.

Amartha is the first Southeast Asian firm that has raised capital from CIM.

CIM chose Amartha as a partner due to their common goal of supporting financial inclusion, including providing financing for productive Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the statement added. CIM is a social impact investor that has committed to meeting European Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), a European standard for sustainable finance.

"The collaboration with CIM can support our goal of giving productive loans to local SMEs. Amartha and CIM {both believe} technology and inclusive financial services can improve the wealth of the grassroots segment," Ramadhan Anggakaradibrata, Chief Financial Officer, Amartha.

"CIM has committed to supporting SME digital loans in Indonesia as we thought SMEs are the backbones of the country's economy and the biggest gap in the financial sector," according to Bernhard Eikenberg, head of emerging market strategy, CIM.

The last known funding by Amartha was the $7.5 milion raised in June 2021 from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund Norfund. it also bagged $28 million in May 2021 from Women's World Banking and MDI Ventures, where existing investor such as Mandiri Capital Indonesia and UOB Venture Management also topped up.

Additionally, in February 2021, it secured $50 milion in debt financing from the US-based lending platform Lendable.

Since its inception in 2010, Amartha has disbursed loans of 12 trillion rupiah to over 1.6 million SMEs in Indonesia. It claims to be profitable since the last three years.

In an interaction with Nikkei Asia in 2022, Amartha said it aimed to double the amount of loans it channels to women running microbusinesses in rural Indonesia to about 13 trillion rupiah by 2025.

Amartha runs an online marketplace that channels capital from urban investors to women micro-entrepreneurs in the form of loans. This helps them raise working capital for their businesses. The company recently reached onboarded its millionth female borrower.

Deal Street Asia