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“Social impact” is one of the most overused phrases in a Southeast Asian pitch deck. Founders apply the label to themselves, and in a funding winter it gets stretched to cover almost anything with a farmer, a recycling bin or an “underserved” customer in the slide.
So we went looking for startups that do more than borrow the vocabulary. We searched for companies whose core business serves people the market usually ignores: smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, rural women borrowers, people with disabilities, migrant domestic workers and villages without clean water.
Also Read: Why financial inclusion requires more than access
Seventeen made the cut, across seven countries. One pattern stands out: most of them live in agriculture, fisheries and waste, sectors where impact can be measured in kilograms, hectares and rupiah rather than in adjectives. Another pattern is the shadow over the sector. Indonesia’s eFishery scandal has made investors far more sceptical of impact claims, and several companies on this list have been through layoffs, controversies or long quiet spells of their own.
Inclusive finance
1. Amartha
Amartha is one of the region’s longest-running impact fintechs. It lends working capital to women micro-entrepreneurs in rural Indonesia, a segment most banks still treat as unbankable. Its most recent equity cheque was a US$17.5 million investment from Accion, meant to build data and AI tools for underserved women-led businesses. In 2023 it also raised US$100 million in debt from a US lender, which is a reminder that microfinance at scale runs on debt, not just equity.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: 2010 | Founder and CEO: Andi Taufan Garuda Putra.
Investors: Accion, Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II, MDI Ventures, Mandiri Capital, UOB Venture Management, LINE Ventures, Bamboo Capital Partners, Norfund, Beenext, Lynx Asia Partners; debt from Lendable and others.
2. Kitabisa
Kitabisa calls itself Indonesia’s and Southeast Asia’s largest donation-based crowdfunding platform, raising money for medical bills, scholarships and disaster relief. It also shows how much a platform like this depends on trust. Back in 2017 it had to take down a campaign after the organiser was accused of spending donations meant for a shelter for elderly people on a new iPhone and an SUV.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: Conceptualised in December 2012, launched 2013 | Founders: Muhammad Alfatih Timur and Vikra Ijas
Investors: ANGIN
3. LTS Ventures
Laos rarely appears in a regional startup story, which is reason enough to include LTS. It runs a microfinance platform for more than 900 Lao village banks. It also trains villagers and smallholder farmers to run their own village banks. This is financial inclusion from the bottom up, without a super app in sight.
Location: Vientiane, Laos | Founded: c. 2019 | Founders: Lattana Keosihavong, Tim Scheffmann, Sonesak Sehavong
Investors: Pre-seed from co-founder Tim Scheffmann (per its e27 profile)
Farmers and fisherfolk
4. Aruna
Aruna was started by three Telkom University classmates, two of whom grew up in fishing families. It links small-scale fishermen directly to domestic and export buyers, cutting out layers of middlemen. It raised US$35 million in Series A funding in 2021 and added US$30 million more in 2022. The downturn hit it too: in March 2025 it said its layoffs affected 18 per cent of staff, after reports put the figure at 40 per cent, and insisted its expansion plans would continue.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: 2016 | Founders: Farid Naufal Aslam, Indraka Fadhlillah, Utari Octavianty
Investors: Prosus Ventures, East Ventures, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, AC Ventures, MDI Ventures, SMDV, SIG, Indogen Capital.
5. JALA
JALA combines water-quality sensors and a farm-management app with financing, inputs and a marketplace for shrimp farmers. That covers most of what a small pond operator needs to stop farming by guesswork. Its US$13.1 million Series A was led by Intudo. It also works with Conservation International on Climate Smart Shrimp, which pairs more intensive farming with mangrove restoration on traditional ponds.
Also Read: Why SEA founders keep failing at impact funds (and it’s not your pitch deck)
Location: Yogyakarta, Indonesia | Founded: 2017 | Founders: Aryo Wiryawan (chairman, a shrimp farmer since 2001) and Liris Maduningtyas (CEO)
Investors: Intudo Ventures, SMDV, Mirova, The Meloy Fund, Real Tech Fund, 500 Global, Conservation International Ventures, Hatch.
6. Mayani
Mayani began with a farm cooperative in Batangas. It has since built what it says is a network of more than 144,000 smallholder farmers and fisherfolk across eight regions. It sells their produce to hotels, food processors and supermarket chains. Its US$1.7 million seed round was AgFunder’s first investment in the Philippines. It also says its model raises farmers’ farm-gate incomes by at least 30 per cent.
Location: Philippines | Founded: 2019 | Founders: JT Solis (CEO), Jeff Barreiro, Ochie San Juan, Ronald Bime and Joseff Amarra (CTO)
Investors: AgFunder (GROW Impact Fund), Atlas Ventures, Accelerating Asia, Ocean Impact Organization, TheVentures, Plug and Play Ventures, NinjaVentures (Ninjacart)
7. Koltiva
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia | Founded: 2013 | Founders: Ainu Rofiq, Manfred Borer, Furqonuddin Ramdhani
Investors: AC Ventures, Silverstrand Capital, Planet Rise, Development Finance Asia, Blue 7, The Meloy Fund.
Koltiva grew out of a Swiss-backed sustainable cocoa programme. It started with CocoaTrace, a cloud-based tool for tracing smallholder cocoa supply chains in Indonesia. Today it sells traceability, extension services and digital payments to agribusinesses. That has become a much easier sale now that the EU’s deforestation regulation forces buyers to prove where their commodities come from. The AC Ventures-led Series A was described only as a “seven-figure” round.
8. Eratani
Eratani gives rice farmers credit, inputs, agronomy advice and access to buyers. It says it reached more than 34,000 farmers in 2024 and raised their yields by 29 per cent and their incomes by 25 per cent. Its US$6.2 million Series A, led by Clay Capital, came with an unusually sober message from the CEO: the focus is on building a solid foundation, not rapid expansion.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: 2021 | Founders: Andrew Soeherman (CEO), Bambang Cahyo Susilo (CFO), among others
Investors: Clay Capital, TNB Aura, SBI Ven Capital, AgFunder, Genting Ventures, IIX, Trihill Capital, BIG Ventures, Orvel Ventures, Ascend Angels.
9. Elevarm
Elevarm supplies greenhouse-grown seedlings, bio-based fertilisers and AI-assisted growing methods to horticulture smallholders, and says it supports more than 15,000 farmers in Java. It followed a US$2.6 million seed round with a US$4.25 million pre-Series A led by Intudo. One awkward detail: its seed round included an angel cheque from Gibran Huzaifa, whose own company, eFishery, later became the centre of an alleged accounting fraud.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: 2022 | Co-founder and CEO: Bayu Syerli
Investors: Intudo, Insignia Ventures Partners, 500 Global, eFishery founder Gibran Huzaifa (angel).
10. AgriG8
Rice paddies are a large and often overlooked source of methane. AgriG8 links rice farmers to financing that rewards lower-emission water management, and checks their claims using satellite imagery and a gamified app called CropPal. If it works, it pays farmers to cut emissions rather than asking them to absorb the cost.
Location: Singapore (pilots in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia) | Founded: Not disclosed | Founders: David Chen, Joshua Tan
Investors: Better Bite Ventures, The Trendlines Group.
Waste and the circular economy
11. Waste4Change
Waste4Change is a self-described social enterprise that handles waste from collection to recycling for companies, households and local governments. Since its US$5 million Series A it has done something few impact startups bother with: published net carbon accounting. Its own operations produced 35.4 million kg of CO2-equivalent emissions between 2014 and 2024, but keeping waste out of landfills and open burning avoided 64.2 million kg, a net reduction of 28.8 million kg.
Location: Bekasi, Indonesia | Founded: 2014 | Founder and CEO: Mohamad Bijaksana Junerosano
Investors: AC Ventures and PT Barito Mitra Investama (co-leads), Basra Corporation, Paloma Capital, PT Delapan Satu Investa, Living Lab Ventures, SMDV, Urban Gateway Fund.
12. Remind
Only about 10 per cent of Indonesia’s e-waste is properly recycled. Remind collects discarded electronics and recovers the metals, and its US$1.3 million round will fund physical separation facilities. Its longer-term aim is to become a full smelter. Investors also highlighted something rare in this sector: it has been profitable from early on.
Location: Indonesia | Founded: Launched September 2023 | CEO: Dzikri Soefihara
Investors: Bali Investment Club and BEENEXT (co-leads), Spiral Ventures.
13. Arus Oil
Arus Oil started as a community recycling point for used cooking oil in Subang Jaya. It now runs an on-demand collection platform that sends household and restaurant oil to biodiesel refineries instead of down the drain. 1337 Ventures’ backing put it on investors’ radar.
Location: Malaysia | Founded: 2017 | Founder: Syazwan Majid
Investors: 1337 Ventures (Accelerator Fund I).
14. GEPP Sa-Ard
GEPP is Thai for “collect”. It started as an app matching people who had recyclables with people who would buy them, and has grown into a platform that tracks waste from source to final disposal. In a UN ESCAP smart-city pilot in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, it helped cut landfill waste by 32 per cent.
Location: Bangkok, Thailand | Founded: July 2017 | Founders: Mayuree Aroonwaranon and Dome Boonyanurak
Investors: The FinLab, Seedstars, Delta Electronics (Thailand), depa Thailand and AIS The StartUp.
Water, work and inclusion
15. Wateroam
Three NUS students built a water filter that looks and works like a bicycle pump. It produces 300 litres of clean water an hour without electricity and has reached remote villages and disaster zones in more than 40 countries. The company aims to put clean water in the hands of 30 million people by 2030. That is ambitious for a company that runs on grants rather than venture capital.
Location: Singapore | Founded: 2014 | Founders: David Pong, Lim Chong Tee, Vincent Loka
Investors: Grant-funded, including NUS Enterprise, DBS Foundation and Temasek Trust’s T-Ignite.
16. Kerjabilitas
Kerjabilitas is a job platform for people with disabilities. It is free for job seekers and matches them with employers based on the type of disability and the needs of the role. At last count it had at least 9,000 applicants and 1,500 partner companies, mostly in banking, retail and hospitality. It is one of the few Southeast Asian startups built specifically around disability inclusion.
Location: Yogyakarta, Indonesia | Founded: 2014 | Founders: Tety Sianipar and Rubby Emir (CEO)
Investors: Small seed round (around US$50,000, per CB Insights).
17. Maid Without Borders
Maid Without Borders is a direct-hire app that matches domestic workers with employers without going through an agency. That matters because agency fees often push migrant workers into debt before they even start. Low previously led app developer Techsailor to an acquisition.
Location: Singapore | Founded: Incorporated August 2024 | Founder and CEO: Juliet Low
Investors: Not disclosed.
The impact claim is only as good as the data behind it
Read the list closely and another pattern emerges. The strongest pitches here come with numbers: Mayani’s income uplift, Eratani’s yield gains, Waste4Change’s carbon ledger, Remind’s tonnage. Nearly all of those numbers are self-reported.
Also Read: You don’t need more funding for social impact, you need a common language
After eFishery, investors in Southeast Asia have learned the hard way that a mission statement is not an audit. The next generation of impact startups will be judged less by how warmly they describe smallholders and more by whether a third party can verify what they claim to have changed. Many of these companies are already ahead of the region on that test. The rest have some homework to do.
The post Social impact is easy to pitch and hard to prove: 17 SEA startups taking the harder route appeared first on e27.
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