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- 🤯 The Rise and Brutal Fall of UangTeman
🤯 The Rise and Brutal Fall of UangTeman
“Most Trusted Fintech” → Bankruptcy → Prison
Admond Lee
September 07, 2025
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.
Today’s story is about how UangTeman went from the first and largest P2P lending platform in Indonesia to 🪦. Let’s get to it! 🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → UangTeman
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Relentless growth without a resilient business model
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Treat governance and team welfare as first-class products
🔗 The Runway Insights → 7 mental models Jeff Bezos uses to run Amazon
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → RushOwl raises $10M (Series A) to scale dynamic ride-sharing platform
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: UangTeman
🚀 The Rise of UangTeman
🇮🇩 Founded by Aidil Zulkifli (a Singaporean lawyer turned founder) and Soon Chern Chua (COO) in 2014, UangTeman was a fintech platform in Indonesia that specialised in providing instant, short-term micro loans — often referred to as “payday” or consumer loans.
🤑 How UangTeman started
When Aidil saw how his secretary in Jakarta was forced to borrow from a predatory loan shark to cover short-term cash needs, that experience opened his eyes to a much bigger problem: millions of Indonesians were unbanked and excluded from formal credit systems, leaving them vulnerable to informal lenders.
With that spark of inspiration, Aidil teamed up with co-founder Soon Chern Chua and launched UangTeman (meaning “MoneyFriend” in Indonesian) in April 2015.
The Problem — 🇮🇩 Tens of millions of adults are unbanked and can’t access formal credit.
Only 36% of adults had formal bank accounts, and just 13% could borrow from financial institutions.
🦈 The rest? They were stuck with loan sharks charging 20% per day plus fees.
We're talking about people making $400 a month who needed emergency cash for medical bills or school fees, and their only options were informal lenders or loan sharks who charged extortionate rates.
Traditional banks? They were too slow or unwilling to serve these people.
The Solution — 💰 UangTeman built a fully digital lending platform with:
Fast approval — loans disbursed in hours instead of weeks.
No collateral required — making it accessible to low-income borrowers.
Data-driven risk models — algorithms assessed creditworthiness using alternative data.
The service charged about 1% per day interest on short-term loans. Critics saw it as expensive, but for many borrowers it was still better than loan sharks.
🤑 In short, UangTeman was Indonesia’s first online platform for instant micro loans.
Through a website or app, people could borrow small amounts of money (usually a few hundred dollars or less) for short periods, without collateral.
 | People were skeptical in the beginning, but growth started to pick up once people realised UangTeman was the real deal. 🏦 UangTeman was growing 20-25% month-over-month from the start. By 2016, they'd grown over 300% with a default rate below 2% — better than most traditional banks. |
They issued 12,680 loans in 2016, which was 222% higher than 2015.
By 2017, they expanded from Jakarta to 14+ cities across Indonesia and had 2,400 registered borrowers with an 83% repeat rate. Not just that, UangTeman also raised $12 million (Series A) in 2017 (co-led by K2 Ventures, Enspire, and Tim Draper’s Draper Associates) .
The company was crushing it financially too. Aidil claimed they were profitable from day one, and by 2018, they'd disbursed around IDR 430 billion (about $30 million) to 68,000 customers. Their loan book grew almost 500% in one year alone.
⛰️ At its peak, UangTeman:
Operated in 16 cities across Indonesia.
Raised a total ~$22 million from top-tier investors.
Secured a permanent OJK lending license in 2019, one of the first few to get it.
Became one of the largest and most trusted online lenders in Indonesia, with a reputation for being OJK-compliant when many competitors operated in the shadows.
Had the largest market share (31%) in P2P lending to individuals.
Was winning awards left and right — "Most Trusted Company in Microfinance" and "Best P2P Lending Platform" — you name it.
They grew like crazy, attracted top-tier investors, and operated with proper licensing in a sector known for rogue players.
🌈 And they lived happily-ever-after…
📉 The Fall of UangTeman
… until the journey took a sharp turn.
Shits happened, one after another. The first blow came when UangTeman’s Series B round ($10M) collapsed in late 2019. Then, COVID-19 hit in early 2020. UangTeman quietly stopped issuing new loans, stopped paying staff salaries, and even failed to remit employee tax deductions.
The craziest part?
🤯 Aidil allegedly faced fraud charges due to a $150k with his own board.
📌 Here’s what happened to UangTeman:
The company hadn't paid salaries and employee income tax (PPh) since the end of last year. During the annual tax filing, I found out that I'd underpaid taxes. Apparently, throughout 2020 they gave employees tax slips, but never paid them.
🤑 The Lending Days
2014 — UangTeman’s parent company PT Digital Alpha Indonesia was founded in Jakarta by Aidil Zulkifli (ex-lawyer from Singapore) and partners.
Apr 2015 — 🔥 UangTeman officially launched as Indonesia’s first online micro-lending service, offering short-term unsecured loans via web/app.
Jun 2017 — The startup registered with OJK under new fintech lending rules (Regulation 77/2016), becoming one of the first legal P2P lenders in the country.
Aug 2017 — 💰 UangTeman raised $12 million (Series A), co-led by K2 Venture Capital and Alpha JWC.
Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper joined in, marking his first bet in Indonesia.
Aug 2019 — 🤝🏻 UangTeman obtained a permanent business license from OJK (a major regulatory milestone) and made the first close of its Series B round (targeting $10M total) with new Japanese investors coming on board.
Oct 2019 — 💸 Plans to raise the remaining $10M Series B fell through as key investors pulled out.
This funding failure marked the beginning of UangTeman’s financial strain.
🥵 The No-More-Money Days
Early 2020 — 🦠 COVID-19 pandemic hit.
2 investors (Pegasus Tech Ventures and ACA Investments) who had committed to inject $10M cancelled their investment amid the market uncertainty.
People were losing jobs or earning less, which meant higher default risks on loans, and new lending plummeted as everyone hunkered down.
Dec 2020 — ⚠️ Facing a cash crunch, UangTeman halted new loan disbursements and reportedly stopped paying employee salaries and taxes from this point onward.
Management tried to spin it for a while – incredibly, they even gave employees official payslips showing income tax deductions, yet never actually paid those taxes to the government.
2021 — UangTeman was in a full-blown financial crisis.
Apr — Operations grind to a standstill. A majority of staff (over 80 people) resigned as salaries went unpaid. By this time, no new loans were being issued at all.
Oct — 🚨 UangTeman was hit with a lawsuit from an investor (Real Kapital) over an alleged breach of contract, reflecting the mounting legal and financial disputes.
Nov–Dec — 🚨 Employees filed a public petition urging management to pay overdue wages. The company engaged FTI Consulting to seek restructuring options or new investors, and hints at a potential acquisition deal in the works.
Mar 2022 — 🚨 The OJK revoked UangTeman’s P2P lending license, citing non-compliance and financial troubles.
UangTeman was no longer authorised to operate its lending platform.
Mid 2022 — UangTeman sued OJK to appeal the license revocation, but the Jakarta courts dismissed the case, upholding the regulator’s decision.
May 2024 — 🤯 Suddenly, Aidil Zulkifli was arrested on charges of alleged fraud related to a bounced cheque given to a board member in a 2016 financing dispute.
🤔 Well, a deal Aidil made back in 2016 with a private lender (who later became a board member) came back to haunt him.
The two had a dispute over a IDR 2.5 billion ($150K) funding transaction, and in a desperate attempt to settle it, Aidil wrote the guy a cheque in 2021 that bounced due to insufficient funds.
😡 The angry investor didn’t just sue — he went to the police, accusing Aidil of fraud.
Oct 2024 — Aidil was allegedly convicted of cheque fraud in Jakarta courts, amid allegations he misused company funds and deceived the investor.
Mar 2025 — Indonesia’s Supreme Court upheld Aidil’s conviction, effectively concluding the UangTeman saga on a somber note.
It was a dramatic and painful finish: the founder of UangTeman ended up behind bars, essentially for the fallout of trying (and failing) to repay a debt when his company was collapsing around him.
UangTeman pioneered an entire industry, survived the early "digital loan shark" criticism, got proper licensing, raised over $22 million from top-tier VCs, and dominated their market.
But when COVID hit and cash got tight, unclear funding agreements became criminal cases, board members became adversaries, and they killed the entire company.
The most brutal irony?
Aidil built UangTeman to help people escape predatory lending, but in the end, unclear financial agreements and a bounced check sent him to prison.
🙏🏻 Sometimes the very thing you're trying to disrupt ends up disrupting you instead.
Want to learn more about UangTeman’s downfall?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Founder (Aidil Zulfikli) of UangTeman
Mistake 1: Relentless growth without a resilient business model
📒 UangTeman scaled like the good times would never end — bigger loan book, more cities, more headcount — assuming the next cheque would always clear.
They’d closed a Series B (first close in 2019; announced as US$10M total by Feb 2020) and kept building for “more,” but didn’t harden the model for a funding delay or a shock to credit risk.
Their core product was ultra-short-term, high-APR micro-loans (famously priced around 1% per day at launch). That works when capital is plentiful and default curves are tame — but it’s brittle when liquidity dries up or losses jump.
Instead of de-risking (e.g., diversifying into lower-APR instalments with steadier funding), the company was still geared to speed and growth.
And when those shocks (unable to fundraise, COVID-19 hit) arrived, the engine seized.
Mistake 2: Poor governance and team care
If you zoom in on UangTeman’s last 18–24 months, it wasn’t one big blow — it was a pile-up of small, “we’ll-fix-it-later” governance misses that, together, told regulators and investors: “this house isn’t in order”.
📉 As the financial crunch deepened:
Ex-staff alleged unpaid salaries and unremitted payroll taxes
Lending reportedly halted
Morale cratered
OJK ultimately revoked the license in Mar 2022.
Once your license goes, you’re done.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Build a business model that can survive storms
Growth is sexy, but resilience is what keeps companies alive when storms hit.
UangTeman’s short-term, payday lending engine exposed them to concentrated risk — when default rates spiked under COVID, their pool shrank and revenues crashed.
Compare this with competitors like Kredivo and Akulaku — these guys layered digital lending inside e-commerce, buy-now-pay-later, and diversified financial products, spreading risk and creating multiple pillars of stability.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
📍 Map out your entire customer risk
Identify what could kill cash flow, churn, or collections.
Layer revenue streams, build safety nets, and never bet it all on just one segment.
If you’re pure lending, explore partnerships for risk-sharing or embed lending inside other verticals, just like Akulaku leverages e-commerce buyers for healthy cross-sell.
🏦 Evolve the product/pricing mix so it ages well
Add longer-tenor, lower-APR products (instalments, salary-linked, secured micro-instalments).
Show effective annual cost by default and reward repeat on-time payers with risk-based pricing.
Piggyback merchant pipes by embedding at checkout to slash CAC and boost frequency (BNPL-like rails).
Lesson 2: Treat governance and team welfare as first-class products
If your lending app is the “front end”, then payroll, taxes, benefits, licensing, and regulator comms are the core services. When those services go down, your whole product goes down.
❌ That’s basically what happened to UangTeman with months of unpaid salaries, payroll tax slips issued but not remitted, rising internal chaos, employee petitions, and finally — license revocation.
Once trust was broken with employees and the regulator, the business had no runway left.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
🫡 Put payroll & taxes on autopilot (no human discretion)
Segregated accounts: Create a locked payroll/tax account (or e-wallet) that auto-sweeps gross payroll + statutory withholdings on invoice day. Founders/CFO can’t “borrow” from it when cash is tight.
Auto-remittance: Use your payroll provider (or a local CPA) to file and remit taxes automatically every pay cycle.
Immutable evidence: Store stamped filings/receipts in a regulator-ready folder. The board should spot-check one filing per quarter.
💟 Make team welfare a risk control, not a perk
Hard promises: Codify “payroll first” in your crisis SOP. If cash is tight, pre-announce temporary cuts but pay on time. Never “mystery delay” salaries or benefits.
Benefits guardrails: Auto-debit health/pension and show live contribution status to employees in their HR portal.
Speak early: If you must pause lending or cut back, tell your team the plan before rumours do. Transparent communication builds trust.
Lesson 3: Clear contracts and board playbooks
Never accept “we’ll figure it out later” when dealing with investors, co-founders, or the board.
💵 When UangTeman’s founder issued a “friendly” check that bounced, it became criminal. Had they formalised the private lender’s investment as a convertible note or a clear loan agreement, the legal liability would’ve been business — not personal.
In any high-risk digital lending business, ambiguity about investor money can torpedo more than your valuation.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
✍🏻 Always document in writing
Is this funding a loan, equity, convertible note, or something else?
Define exit scenarios, returns, and responsibilities up front.
If they’re joining your board, agree how disputes will be resolved long before there’s cash on the table.
🤝🏻 Eliminate board conflicts before they ignite
Conflict-of-interest policy with teeth
If an investor also sits on your board and is a creditor or merchant partner, require a COI disclosure, recusal on related votes, and a side-letter register so side deals are visible.
One page “source-of-funds map”
Show how each capital source is used (ops runway vs. loan book vs. marketing), what covenants apply, and who holds liens. The board signs off and revises at every raise.
Decision logs beat memories
Keep a running board decision log (date, motion, documents referenced, vote, recusals).
When disputes arise (and they will), your minutes are your moat.
🔗 The Runway Insights
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
RushOwl raises $10M (Series A) to scale dynamic ride-sharing platform (Link)
Fuku raises $853K (Pre-Seed) to launch AI recruitment platform (Link)
Zuzu bags $5.9M (Series B) to help independent hotels across SEA and India unlock online sales channels and optimise revenue (Link)
Desty, an Indonesian e-commerce startup, got acquired by Mekari to strengthen omni-channel commerce solutions (Link)
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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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