Reku, Indonesia’s crypto exchange, raises $11m in AC Ventures-led Series A

Indonesia-based crypto exchange and marketplace Reku has announced raising $11 million in a Series A funding round led by AC Ventures.

The funding round for the five-year-old startup was also participated by Coinbase Ventures and Skystar Capital, according to the announcement.

Reku, which offers its users the lowest fees in the Indonesian market, said it will use the fresh capital to add more than 50 team members to its current headcount of 80. It will also roll out new offerings to address the biggest pain points of Indonesia’s crypto investors, for both experienced traders and first-timers alike.

Despite this round being its first institutional fundraising, Reku said it generated $3 billion in gross transaction value in 2021. The platform was built fully in-house, has been refined over the last five years with maximum security and compliance in mind, and has grown almost exclusively from word-of-mouth.

The exchange only provides reputable tokens to its users, meaning tokens must be highly credible and have sufficient liquidity, in order to provide an extra layer of safety to users on Reku.

Crypto transactions in Indonesia clocked in at $60 billion in 2021, with the number of registered users reaching 15 million as of June 2022, a 5% penetration by population). In terms of usage, this puts the island nation in the top ten globally.

“It’s no secret that crypto has been surging in Indonesia in recent years. Despite multiple macroeconomic pullbacks such as the pandemic and the 2022 recession, local demand remains resilient. That said, there are still many problems faced by the country’s crypto users,” said co-founder and CEO Sumardi Fung

Meanwhile, tech veteran Jesse Choi has recently joined the company’s leadership team as COO. A graduate of Columbia University, he is a former consultant at Bain & Company and held a senior marketing role at Thumbtack before becoming a private equity investor at Bain Capital.

From there, Jesse had professional stints at Playground Capital, Payfazz, AC Ventures, and earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business before joining Reku.