Sequoia India leads Series B funding round in Indonesian firm Moka

By Joseph Rai

  • 14 Sep 2018
Credit: Shah Junaid/VCCircle

Sequoia Capital, which recently closed its sixth India-dedicated fund to invest in India and Southeast Asia, has led an investment round in Indonesian cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) software provider Moka.

The investment was part of Moka's Series B round of funding as it raised $24 million (Rs 172 crore) from new and existing investors, said the company in a statement.

New investors included SoftBank Ventures Korea, Singapore-based EDBI and EV Growth, while existing investors were Mandiri Capital, Convergence Ventures and Fenox, the statement added.

The fresh funding will help the company speed up product development as it expands its services beyond small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enterprise clients. 

Moka, which was founded in 2014 by Haryanto Tanjo and Grady Laksmono, provides retailers with tools to start, run and grow their business through its mobile POS platform. The company currently serves 12,000 businesses in the food and beverage, retail and beauty categories, and is close to hitting $1 billion in annual transaction volume, it said.

"Sequoia India was inspired by Moka’s vision to create a multi-faceted software platform for business operations and payments," said Shailendra Singh, managing director at Sequoia Capital (India). 

Sequoia India's Southeast Asia deals

Sequoia India had established a presence in Southeast Asia in 2012. Its investments there include Go-Jek, Tokopedia and Traveloka, which now rank among Indonesia's largest unicorns.

The region accounts for 20-30% of Sequoia India's investments, by value, and that is expected to continue in the near term, it had said.

In India, the venture capital firm has invested in more than 130 startups including unicorns such as Ola, MuSigma and Zomato, though it was not an early investor in any of them and came in at the growth stage.

Over the past 11 years, the venture capital firm has deployed more than $2 billion and exited over 55 firms in India.