Indonesia’s 60 million workers contribute 20% to the gross domestic product but face a lot of uncertainty. Many are forced to jump from job to job, some fall victim to job posting scams, and without a solid employment history, they cannot qualify for financial services, the founders of Pintarnya say. That’s why they created the app, which includes verified job opportunities and financial services, such as loans, for workers. The startup announced today that it had raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and General Catalyst. The budget includes a $100,000 grant from Sequoia Spark, a female founder program in which co-founder Nelly Nurmalasari participated.
Pintarnya was launched in major Indonesian cities in May by Nurmalasari, Henry Hendrawan, and Ghirish Pokardas. Nurmalasari and Hendrawan were previously senior executives at lifestyle super app unicorn Traveloka, while Pokardas was a KKR executive who worked with portfolio companies in the financial services industry.
In an email, the co-founders told the blog line that Nurmalasari also owned a hair salon; as an SME owner, she experienced the pain points of hiring, filtering, and verifying applicants for blue-collar jobs. She also saw that they struggled to obtain loans from traditional financial institutions due to their lack of verifiable work and income histories.
“The problem became apparent when her employee’s struggles spillover became hers as these challenges affect employee performance,” they said. “This reinforced the vision for a one-stop digital platform that can help address this challenge, be more deployable, and access financial services products.”
Pintarnya focuses on the food and beverage, hotels, and retail sectors, which have reopened after COVID-lockdowns, and logistics. It plans to expand into other industries and is open to working with employers from different sectors.
Job seekers register and create a profile, and Pintarnya uses that information to recommend job opportunities based on their requirements, location, skills, and other data. Variables it considers include a job seeker’s current salary and availability, whether or not they have a photo on their resume, and the frequency with which they switch jobs. Important criteria include the distance between a job and their home, their profile and job history, and their self-determined abilities. The team said that as they build a track record of successfully connecting and placing job seekers with employers, Pintarnya’s recommendation algorithms will improve by “understanding which other traits job seekers have a greater tendency to convert their application into.” a successful job placement.”
Pintarnya also works with employers to screen and recruit the most suitable employees for their needs, including online testing. It also verifies the authenticity of job postings to avoid scams and marks verified job postings using green shield marks. Verification includes checking that a job posting is from a real employer and curating it based on new posts, jobs closest to a job seeker, jobs for those without experience, salary information, and other factors the platform is experimenting with.
“Technology has transformed the kind of jobs created in Indonesia, but the recruitment process, especially in the working-class segments, continues to be disrupted,” said Abheek Anand, general manager of Sequoia India, “Pintarnya’s founding team brings years of exceptional experience building technical and financial products to solve this problem. We are excited to partner with them in their journey to help millions of Indonesians realize their full economic potential. “
