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- 🤯 CROWDE: The Cashless Farm Lender That Lost Its Licence
🤯 CROWDE: The Cashless Farm Lender That Lost Its Licence
How Indonesia's cashless farm lender went from a $9M Series B to a revoked licence and a Rp 730 billion Bank Mandiri lawsuit.
Admond Lee
October 25, 2026
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
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Today's story is about an Indonesian agritech that raised $9M to fund farmers, then lost its licence amid allegations from its regulator and lenders. Let's get to it! 🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → CROWDE
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Pivoted from retail investors to bank money
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Let users see every loan in their name
🔗 The Runway Insights → How to build an AI brain for your positioning
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → Salmon Group secures $140M in additional financing to launch motorcycle and MSME loans nationwide in the Philippines
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: CROWDE
🚀 The Rise of CROWDE
🇮🇩 Founded by Yohanes Sugihtononugroho (CEO) in 2015, CROWDE was an Indonesian agritech P2P lending platform that connected urban retail investors with smallholder farmers who couldn't get bank loans.
🕺🏻 Founders’ Story
CROWDE started in 2013, on a university field placement in Cianjur, West Java, where Yohanes helped a struggling mother of 3 start a mushroom business.
He'd tried farming himself too, growing chillies and mushrooms around Bogor, so he knew first-hand what farmers were up against.
💡 In 2015, he launched CROWDE in Jakarta as a crowd-investing marketplace. Co-founder Muhamad Risyad Ganis joined in January 2016.
🔓 The bet was simple → farmers were unbankable, urban investors wanted social impact — connect them, and both win.
The Problem — 🧑🏻🌾 Indonesian smallholder farmers were stuck in a brutal cycle — no bank access, no working capital, and loan sharks at every corner.
Many had no collateral, and the nearest bank branch was often far away.
Middlemen captured most of the supply chain value, leaving farmers with the least.
The Solution — 💰 CROWDE built a web marketplace where farmers submitted projects and retail investors funded them starting from Rp 10,000 (under US$1).
"Cashless" closed-loop model — instead of sending farmers cash, CROWDE delivered seeds, fertiliser, and pesticides via partner supply stores.
Pre-arranged offtaker relationships (traders, processors, exporters) matched expected harvests to actual buyers.
🇮🇩🧑🏻🌾 In short, CROWDE wanted to be the financial inclusion engine for Indonesia's unbankable farmers.
 | ✌🏻 The pitch worked. Investors loved the social-impact angle. Farmers loved the cheaper capital. 💰 In October 2018, CROWDE raised a seed round led by GREE Ventures (now STRIVE). |
Around this time, it started bringing in banks and other institutions to fund farmers, alongside retail investors. 🏦 In September 2019, CROWDE raised a ~$1M (Pre-Series A) led by Mandiri Capital Indonesia. The same month, Bank Mandiri agreed to lend up to Rp 100 billion, in a first phase, to small farm businesses CROWDE referred. |  Yohanes Sugihtononugroho (Co-Founder & CEO of CROWDE) |
Yohanes later explained the shift. The retail-investor model, he said, "was too unstable and the system was more geared to look after investors than farmers." And "the government started to mandate that banks had to invest 30-50% with fishermen and farmers." CROWDE pitched itself as the bridge.
By September 2021, CROWDE had its full OJK P2P lending licence. A month later, it raised a ~$9M (Series B) led by Monk's Hill Ventures, with Mandiri Capital and Great Giant Pineapple participating.
🔥 At its peak, CROWDE had:
helped 38,000+ farmers (June 2022)
channelled over US$20 million across 5 major Indonesian islands (2022)
raised a ~$9M (Series B) led by Monk's Hill Ventures
was featured by Google for Startups, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, and the Obama Foundation
From a mushroom project in Cianjur to a $9M Series B. Farmers were getting inputs. Banks were deploying capital. Investors were earning.
Everything looked like it was working.
📉 The Fall of CROWDE
Then came the allegations.
😮 OJK would later allege that between January 2023 and September 2024, CROWDE reported lender funds going to 62 fictitious partners in the regulator's lending database. One of its lenders, J Trust Bank, separately alleged that some farmers listed as borrowers didn't know about their loans. CROWDE's lawyers denied it.
And the feature everyone loved, the "cashless" model, made claims like these very hard to check from outside.
📌 Here’s what happened to CROWDE:
When farmers get access to financing, they're never getting any cash, only fertilisers. We eliminate the nature of money, so farmers can focus on planting.
🧑🏻🌾 Banking the unbankable
Oct 2017 — 🏆 Won S$40,000 at the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge. A few months later, Yohanes and Risyad were named in Forbes Asia's 30 Under 30.
2018 — Co-founder Risyad left in April and went on to co-found Celerates.
Oct 2018 — 💰 Raised a seed round led by GREE Ventures (now STRIVE). Started bringing in banks and other institutions as funders.
Sep 2019 — 🏦 Raised a ~$1M Pre-Series A led by Mandiri Capital Indonesia.
17 Sep 2021 — ✅ Received full OJK P2P lending licence.
21 Oct 2021 — 💰 Raised ~$9M Series B led by Monk's Hill Ventures.
🚨 Fake projects, shell vendors
Jan 2023 — ⚠️ OJK later alleged that from here until Sep 2024, CROWDE reported lender funds going to 62 fictitious partners in the regulator's lending database (PUSDAFIL).
2024 — J Trust Bank's lending through CROWDE became a concern for bank supervisors, OJK's banking chief later said.
11 Feb 2025 — 🚔 J Trust Bank filed a police report alleging fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering, including that some farmers named as borrowers didn't know about their loans. CROWDE's lawyers denied the claims.
15 Jul 2025 — 📰 DealStreetAsia reported allegations that CROWDE used fake projects and shell vendors to funnel about US$50 million in loans.
6 Nov 2025 — ⛔ OJK revoked CROWDE's business licence for breaching minimum equity requirements and deteriorating performance, after earlier sanctions up to a business freeze. CROWDE was told to form a liquidation team.
13 Nov 2025 — ⚠️ Bank Mandiri sued CROWDE and Yohanes for Rp 730.31 billion, after withdrawing an earlier Rp 739.43 billion suit it filed in August.
7 Jan 2026 — 👮 OJK handed Yohanes, as a suspect, and its evidence to South Jakarta prosecutors.
26 Jan 2026 — ⚖️ A Central Jakarta court rejected a pretrial challenge in the case. The alleged offence carries up to 15 years in prison and a Rp 200 billion fine.
Oct 2026 — 🕰️ OJK said CROWDE's defaults to lenders were still not resolved.
CROWDE was built to pull farmers out of poverty.
🙏🏻 Instead, its lenders are still waiting to be repaid, and Bank Mandiri has sued for Rp 730 billion.
And the "cashless" design, sold as smart risk management, made it harder for farmers and lenders to see where each loan went.
Want to learn more about CROWDE’s downfall?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Pivoted from retail investors to bank money
From late 2018, Yohanes shifted CROWDE's funding base toward institutional bank capital, from state-owned Bank Mandiri to regional lender Bank BJB.
🤔 The logic made sense. As Yohanes told it, the government had started requiring banks to put 30-50% with farmers and fishermen. CROWDE could be the bridge.
The trap? Demand that comes from a mandate isn't real market pull.
When a counterparty's demand comes from a mandate, the volume it buys can run ahead of each loan's quality.
The push to 38,000+ farmers and the Rp 1.3 trillion DealStreetAsia reported was lent in 2021-2024 both sit downstream of this one pivot.
Mistake 2: Went cashless, so farmers never saw the money
CROWDE's "cashless" model was pitched as brilliant risk management. Loans went out as seeds, fertiliser, and equipment through farm supply stores, and CROWDE said farmers never got cash.
For that one purpose, it worked.
🧾 But the same design meant farmers never saw the money lent in their names.
So when J Trust Bank later alleged that some farmers listed as borrowers didn't know about their loans (CROWDE's lawyers denied it), the design gave farmers no receipt of their own to check against.
OJK also alleges that from January 2023 to September 2024, CROWDE recorded loans to 62 fictitious partners.
Keeping cash away from farmers also kept farmers from checking. Transparency creates trust, and trust is everything.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: When buyers must buy, volume beats quality
CROWDE's funding base came to include banks that, as Yohanes told it, faced a government mandate to put 30-50% with farmers and fishermen, which on paper unlocked institutional capital at scale.
In practice, a lender working to a mandate can care more about deploying money than about each loan.
🤫 DealStreetAsia reported that of the Rp 1.3 trillion lent through CROWDE in 2021-2024, only about Rp 500 billion is believed to have gone to real farming.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
When your largest buyer has a quota to meet, their pressure to deploy can flow straight into your origination process.
Demand created by regulation disappears or distorts the moment the regulation changes.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
📉 Stress-test growth against a "mandate reversal" scenario
Model what happens if your largest regulatory-driven buyer cuts allocation by 50% in 6 months.
Pre-decide: at what revenue mix do we stop hiring? At what point do we pivot the sales motion toward non-quota buyers?
Benchmark against lending models where underwriting discipline is anchored in borrower selection — not top-down deployment targets.
Lesson 2: Let users see every loan in their name
CROWDE pitched its cashless design to banks and VCs as brilliant risk management: farmers never got cash, it said, so the cash couldn't be misused.
For that one failure mode, it worked.
But a cashless architecture that leaves the beneficiary with no window into their own account also removes the cheapest check in a lending stack — the user themselves.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
Any control that removes a user's visibility into their own account also removes their ability to spot a loan they don't recognise.
In financial products, the beneficiary is your cheapest and most motivated line of defence. Design them into the detection loop, not out of it.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🧾 Send statement-style notifications even when no cash moves
Whenever a loan or liability is booked in a user's name (whether cash moves or not) send an SMS/WhatsApp with: principal amount, loan ID, date, and a one-click dispute link.
If <80% of users acknowledge their outstanding balance monthly, you have a visibility problem.
Tools like Twilio or regional WhatsApp Business API work for thi
🔎 Build a 90-day field verification loop into every closed-loop product
If a loan is backed by physical goods delivered through a partner (seeds, equipment, inventory), send a field agent to confirm delivery with the beneficiary within 90 days.
Spot-check 10-15% of closed loans every month. If delivery confirmation drops below 95%, freeze new originations through that vendor.
This is the audit trail that catches problems before they compound.
Lesson 3: Separate your investors from your lenders
In September 2019, Mandiri Capital led CROWDE's ~$1M (Pre-Series A), and invested again in the 2021 Series B.
When a bank's venture arm sits on your cap table, equity and credit lenses can stop operating independently — and the scrutiny that should catch drift early can weaken.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
When your equity investor is also your largest lender, you risk losing the independent credit scrutiny that normally catches drift before it compounds.
If a strategic investor also wants to lend to you, agree early how much of your loan book it can fund.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🏦 Keep equity and credit decisions in separate rooms
If a bank's venture arm invests, insist their parent's credit team underwrites you independently — same standards they apply to any outside borrower.
Document every override so your board can see them.
📋 Cap single-lender concentration before accepting strategic equity
Hit a hard cap before signing: no single lender >25-30% of total loan book exposure.
If a strategic wants both equity AND to anchor your lending book, lock in the equity but delay their lending ramp until independent lenders match or exceed their line.
🔗 The Runway Insights
How to build an AI brain for your positioning (Read)
What's still there if everyone has your code? (Read)
You can't vibe-code a network (Read)
How to run reference checks that reveal something (Read)
How to use metrics in a fundraise (Read)
Top AEO automations you (or your team) should be running right now (Read)
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
Salmon Group secures $140M in additional financing to scale its credit line and launch motorcycle and MSME loans nationwide in the Philippines (More)
Carro sets up a S$450M car-loan securitisation facility, the first in Singapore, to diversify its long-term funding (More)
Blue Whale Energy raises $4M (Seed) to expand its battery network and ease grid constraints on data centre growth (More)
Genie Health closes $3M (Seed) to build AI-powered health platform helping individuals and providers manage health data (More)
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That’s all for today
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope you’ve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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