Anderson Sumarli, CEO and Co-Founder of Ajaib, talks with Prestige about educating Indonesia’s youth on the importance of investing and personal finances through the investment platform

Indonesia is one of two Southeast Asian countries (the other being Singapore) with the highest number of start-ups reaching unicorn status — valuations of USD 1 billion or more. And not too long ago, the fastest company to do so in the region is Jakarta-based investment platform Ajaib.

“We were humbled and very honoured to become the seventh unicorn start-up in Indonesia and the first investment fintech unicorn in Southeast Asia,” says Anderson Sumarli, CEO and Co-Founder of Ajaib. “As a fast-growing retail investment platform, we are here to assist and serve these retail investors with our app’s product and features, along with our consistent education and communication about financial literacy and inclusion to help strengthen domestic retail investors in Indonesia.”

Perhaps some background information about the company is in order. Ajaib is the first fully online stock brokerage in Indonesia with no offline brokers or branches. Furthermore, it also makes stock trading accessible for millennials through its mobile-first approach with low fees and a friendly user interface.

Speaking about millennials, Sumarli also notes that Ajaib has the vision to welcome a new generation of investors to modern financial services. “We believe that everyone should have easy access to investment. Therefore, a mobile-first approach is the best way to go. We provide an easy way to open an account with a paperless and fully online process, hence we reduce the barrier to invest for our first-time retail investors,” he elaborates. “Millennial investors demand an easier, faster, cheaper, and smarter way to invest. In a way, they are a lot more demanding than the generation before them. They have seen how technology has made commerce and transport immensely easier and they expect the same from Ajaib.”

On top of all that, the company makes things easier for first-time investors through superior user experience. “Ajaib offers an easy 100-percent online account opening experience, which takes only five minutes on mobile phones. We also have zero minimums when opening an account and one of the cheapest prices. We offer advanced charts, deep technical as well as fundamental analysis, and auto trading features on our app to assist millennials in making smarter investment decisions,” shares Sumarli. “We seek to educate Indonesia’s youth on the importance of investing and personal finance from a young age, and we do this through our social media platforms and through educational content in our app.”

He continues: “We are witnessing the democratization of finance for everyone. For the first time, Indonesia’s youth realize that stock investing here is an opportunity for everyone to benefit from our country’s explosive growth. This trend is driven by three things: The shift toward online financial services during the pandemic, the growing influence of mobile amongst Indonesia’s youth, and low savings yield pushing people to look for higher returning assets.”

It goes without saying that the advancement of technology in financial services is very helpful for new investors to become serious adopters. On top of that, Sumarli also notes that the combination of technological advancements and increased public awareness of the importance of investment, especially among young retail investors, has greatly helped the growth of Ajaib.

“Since the launch of Ajaib, we have been committed to reducing the barriers and making it easier to invest with all the products and features we offer in our app. We saw record growth this year, driven by the global rise of retail investors. To date, we have hundreds of thousands of new users. And it is dominated by young retail investors, especially millennials. We grew retail transactions by more than 50 times and educated more than one million first-time investors,” he explains. “Going forward, by maintaining consistency in educating the market, and continuing to encourage the target market to invest, we believe the long-term effect will be more positive, not only for our brand but also for Indonesia. The growth of our users is the growth of retail investors in Indonesia, and we are proud to be able to help users to strengthen domestic retail investors in Indonesia.”

In the end, Sumarli specifically mentions that this is just the beginning in building a generation of investors – a generation that understands the importance and benefits of investing. And Ajaib takes the responsibility seriously.

“There are a few things going on right now as Ajaib grows faster and bigger. Currently, we are focused on building the best stock and mutual fund products and developing new products in our innovation pipeline and product roadmap,” he concludes.