What is Akulaku? Akulaku Review

AKULaku is an installment shopping e-commerce platform focusing on overseas markets. Its services include online shopping and installment payments. Its products have been launched in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other regions. It is committed to providing convenient consumer financial services to users in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

About Akulaku

Akulaku's main product is an installment shopping APP that provides virtual credit cards. It is committed to providing virtual credit card consumption services to people in Southeast Asia who are not covered by bank credit card services. It was officially launched in June 2016, and the transaction volume exceeded RMB 10 million within three months of its launch. In 2017, the number of transactions exceeded 10 million, the transaction amount exceeded RMB 3 billion, the monthly transaction amount increased by 800%, and the cumulative number of transaction users reached 3 million. As of mid-2018, the number of downloads of Akulaku APP has reached nearly 20 million, the number of registered users has exceeded 13 million, the number of new users per month has exceeded 1 million, the monthly transaction amount has reached nearly US$100 million, and the absolute transaction amount has increased by more than 3 times.

Akulaku started out as a virtual credit card company, and then began to build its own e-commerce platform, focusing on "retaining users with scenarios". Its platform is mainly 3C products, with its own mobile phones, as well as home appliances, clothing, toys, beauty products, and other products. There are also third-party suppliers, with more than 3 million SKUs. Its financial products are similar to JD Baitiao or virtual credit cards in China, and users can directly calculate the installment fees on the purchase page.

Akulaku is a platform that provides consumer installment loan services to users in Southeast Asian countries. Its founder, Li Wenbo, said that "Akulaku" means "the goods are sold out" in Indonesian.

Management Team

Li Wenbo, founder and CEO of the company. Li Wenbo worked at King & Woods (Beijing King & Wood Law Firm), focusing on corporate mergers and acquisitions and venture capital; later worked at Ping An Trust's direct investment department, focusing on primary and secondary market additional issuance and acquisition projects. Li Wenbo started a startup project in 2014, specializing in providing cross-border remittance services for Southeast Asian domestic workers in Hong Kong; although the project was ultimately unable to continue to develop, Li Wenbo learned about the local market conditions through contact with local financial institutions in Southeast Asia.

Hu Bo, the company's co-founder and CTO. Hu Bo has worked for CITIC Securities, United Securities, Tencent and Oracle, and has been engaged in system design and development, including algorithmic trading, QFII and other business lines, futures and cash arbitrage, cross-period and tiered fund arbitrage, ETF market making and other system design and development. Hu Bo is good at program development and data analysis.

Development History

-In 2016, Li Wenbo founded Akulaku.

-In March 2016, Akulaku announced the completion of its angel round of financing of US$10 million, with investors including IDG Capital and DCM.

-In December 2017, Akulaku completed a strategic financing of US$80 million from investors including China Chuang Capital, Welight Capital, Arbor Ventures, etc.

-In October 2018, Akulaku completed its Series C financing of US$70 million from investors including Qiming Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Vanguard.

-In October 2018, Indonesian e-commerce company Bukalapak and Akulaku jointly launched an installment payment service without a credit card.

-In January 2019, Akulaku announced the completion of a US$100 million Series D financing round, with Ant Financial (Alibaba) as the investor.