msme
(10)
Atanu Sarkar and the value of one more try
A cash squeeze nearly ended Webskitters in 2016. Atanu Sarkar’s decision to continue helps explain the founder’s enduring interest in training, trust and the people behind the work.
Asikul Alam Khan and the shopkeepers who changed his mind
He set out to bring shopping online. Bangladesh’s neighbourhood retailers gave the PriyoShop founder a different assignment: help them keep their shelves full.
BRI Ventures: A unicorn with small-business manners
BRI’s venture arm gave Indonesia a locally regulated startup fund, then went looking for businesses that could pay their way. Its story runs from affordable drinks and merchant software to a costly reckoning over TaniHub.
Tripti Shinghal Somani
A chartered accountant who left the comfort of blue-chip advisory work to build an incubator for women who were told, quietly, to expect less - and then to expect more.
Borong
The Procurement Platform Built for Enterprises and Suppliers Across Malaysia
NextPay
NextPay is a Philippine fintech that gives small and medium businesses the money-movement tools banks make hard to reach: batch payouts to any local bank or e-wallet, payroll, digital invoicing, QR Ph collections, and an API for embedded finance - with no corporate bank account, setup fee, or maintaining balance required. Founded by Don Pansacola and Aldrich Tan and backed by Y Combinator (W21), it has processed billions of pesos for thousands of growing Filipino businesses.
HALA
HALA is a Riyadh-based fintech building the 'bank of the future' for small and medium enterprises across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region. Founded in 2018 by Esam AlNahdi and Maher Loubieh, it combines business IBAN accounts, card issuance, POS and soft-POS payment acceptance, expense management and SME financing into a single platform regulated by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). HALA serves more than 140,000 businesses, processes over $8 billion in annual transactions, and in September 2025 raised a $157 million Series B - one of the largest fintech Series B rounds in the Middle East - at a reported valuation near $900 million.
majoo Indonesia
majoo is an Indonesian software-as-a-service company that gives micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs/UMKM) an all-in-one cloud platform combining a point-of-sale cashier, inventory, accounting, employee management, CRM, business analytics and an owner app. Founded in Jakarta in 2019, it lets small merchants in food & beverage, retail, services and beauty run and grow their businesses from a single dashboard and sell across offline and online channels.
Mbiz
Mbiz is an Indonesian business-to-business e-procurement platform, founded in 2015 by the Lippo Group, that digitizes how companies and government institutions buy goods and services. It connects enterprise buyers with a network of certified vendors across categories such as office supplies, IT equipment, electronics and services, while bundling free e-procurement tools including online approval, e-tendering, e-invoicing and inventory tracking. Its sister platform, Mbizmarket, extends the same total-procurement approach to micro, small and medium enterprises.
Ralali.com - B2B Marketplace
Ralali.com is Indonesia's pioneering online B2B marketplace, founded in 2013 by Joseph Aditya to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) source products and grow. What began as a marketplace for industrial and MRO supplies has expanded into the Ralali Group B2B ecosystem - connecting more than 1.5 million users to suppliers across multiple industries and layering on financing, agent sales, go-to-market, calibration and waste-management services. The company has raised roughly $35-37M across six rounds through Series D and reports over US$850 million in cumulative transaction value.