Claudia Kolonas worked for more than a decade at Celebes Capital, a venture fund that invested in financial institutions in Indonesia. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she met Richard Chua as a section-mate.
They founded Pluang in 2019 and started with gold, an asset many Indonesians already treat as savings. Users could buy small amounts from a phone. In March 2019 the company raised a Series A of about $3 million.
In March 2021 Openspace Ventures led a $20 million pre-Series B with Go-Ventures. In September 2021 Square Peg led the first $35 million of a Series B. In January 2022 Accel added $55 million, taking the Series B to $110 million.
Pluang later raised $10 million from MUFG Innovation Partners and added local equities trading. Its competitors include Ajaib, Bibit, Stockbit, Tokocrypto and Indodax.