life score, the fintech that wants to give Indonesians more transparency into their credit scores, has raised $4 million in seed funding. The round was led by Hummingbird Ventures with participation from QED Investors and investors AC Ventures and Saison Capital.
The startup’s latest funding round was $2.2 million in pre-funding announced in September. Co-founded by Ongki Kurniawan and Karan Khetan, Skorlife was released to the public around the same time.
Since then, it has reached 100,000 downloads. Other milestones Skorlife has achieved in the last eight months include being the only credit originator admitted by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) in a regulatory sandbox and receiving ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certifications.
The Skorlife app shows users their credit scores and reports from Indonesian credit bureaus and provides personalized advice on how they can improve their credit and stay safe from identity theft. For example, it will remind them to pay their bills, improve their credit mix, and look at the age of their credit. It also provides an Identity Monitoring feature, which alerts users when someone tries to use their identity to apply for a loan.
Skorlife founders Ongki Kurniawan and Karan Khetan
Kurniawan told TechDigiPro that many Indonesians have limited access to fair credit because banks and financial institutions tend to be very conservative with approvals due to a lack of strong infrastructure and credit rating data. As a result, low-interest credit products, including credit cards, are generally only accessible to people with the highest or super-prime credit scores. At the other extreme, subprime lenders are served by peer-to-peer lending and buy now, pay later platforms, but tend to have high interest rates.
This leaves people in the middle, with prime or near-prime credit, who have good payment histories but don’t yet qualify for affordable credit products. Skorlife helps by giving Indonesian consumers access to their scores from Indonesian credit bureaus, along with personalized advice on how to improve them.
Skorlife will work with local regulators as part of OJK’s regulatory sandbox, giving it more flexibility to plan its business model. Your new funding will be used on product development, marketing and recruiting.
