How Sirclo dodged bankruptcy twice to find financial stability

*This article is adapted from * Tech in Asia

This article summarizes an episode of Vertex Ventures’s video series featuring Brian Marshal, founder of Sirclo.

Surviving financial scarcity often teaches businesses their most valuable operational lessons.

For Sirclo founder and CEO Brian Marshal, nearly running out of cash proved that securing sustainable profit easily outpaces rapid growth fueled by outside investment.

He views the next phase of Indonesian ecommerce as an ecosystem reliant on strict financial discipline, robust software integration, AI automation, and interactive video commerce rather than sheer sales volume.

A copied software tool exposed the physical limits of the market

Early ecommerce adoption revealed a major gap between what brands wanted and what they actually required to succeed.

Yet, simple website builders fell short for companies needing hands-on help packing boxes, answering customer questions, and moving products across the archipelago.

While modeling his initial platform on popular American software tools, Marshal soon realized the local Indonesian market demanded heavy physical infrastructure.

“The first service we did was very similar to Shopify,” Marshal notes, adding that his team learned quickly how much sellers depended on physical logistics and customer communication.

Western models assume a baseline of reliable physical infrastructure. In emerging markets, true revenue generation stems from managing the complex labor of shipping goods, not selling software subscriptions.

Running out of money forced the business to change

When external funding slowed post-pandemic, nearly facing bankruptcy twice forced the leadership team into making definitive choices to salvage the company.

They immediately ceased chasing experimental software ventures and retreated to their oldest, most consistently profitable services.

“We made difficult decisions, downsized a couple of teams, shut down a few initiatives and refocused on what worked,” Marshal recalls of the pivot toward helping brands move physical goods.

By cutting tangential projects and reducing headcount, the organization achieved profitability, revealing that many past growth strategies were simply expensive distractions masquerading as opportunities.

A plan for the future demands strict rules

The primary challenge now lies in scaling operations without reverting to careless spending habits. “In 2026, we frame the overall readiness within a set of OKRs that we call Fit and Aim,” Marshal explains.

Hitting these future targets ensures the enterprise sustains its momentum, allowing teams to test fresh markets and deploy new software while guided by a strict sequence of operational priorities:

• Step one: Focuses on consistent annual profits by keeping service delivery costs low as the business expands, proving viability beyond a single round of budget cuts.
• Step two: Implements rigorous financial checks ahead of potential public offerings, using advanced inventory tracking software to ensuring accurate audits rather than relying on blind trust.
• Step three: Frames systems engineering as a direct mechanism for loss prevention, recognizing that upgrading warehouse technology prevents lost products and high return costs.
• Step four: Targets strategic areas where innovation provides a tangible edge, such as using local data for regional shipping, mapping clear parameters for AI tools, and managing creator interactions for video commerce.
• Step five: Maintains optionality for public listing, acknowledging that while leaders cannot control global economic shifts, they can master internal operational efficiency and transparent reporting.

Growing outside the capital means working with local partners

Leadership must prove they can capture new markets without purchasing expensive real estate.

Instead of building dedicated storage facilities in every emerging city, the team opted to construct a decentralized network tailored to specific market realities:

• Shifting buyer locations drive the strategy as populations outside the main islands increase their order volumes, making centralized shipping from the capital prohibitively slow and expensive.
• Existing regional infrastructure provides immediate utility because local shops and available storage spaces can effectively pack and ship orders once linked by central routing software.
• Sacrificing absolute control enables rapid acceleration, allowing the enterprise to conserve capital while penetrating distant consumer markets faster through regional partnerships.

"The approach now is to connect the dots or orchestrate the points currently spread out into one integrated network,” Marshal notes.

New software and video apps change how people buy goods

With localized partnerships addressing the physical shipping bottlenecks, the next frontier requires accelerating internal workflows and adapting to shifting consumer discovery habits.

The next evolution of commerce relies on upgraded digital tools and sales channels, deploying automation across several operational fronts:

• AI integration tackles background workloads first, utilizing emerging programs to manage store pages, update inventory lists, and generate marketing assets.
• Removing human error from repetitive creative chores theoretically elevates the final output, establishing the consistent quality control required as operations scale.

Together, this shift toward automation internally mirrors the external transformation of consumer behavior driven by interactive media ecosystems:

• Video applications dismantle traditional catalog browsing by introducing buyers to items through dynamic short clips and live broadcasts, directly correlating engaging content with increased sales.
• Sales and marketing convergence requires a unified workforce trained to handle both disciplines simultaneously, capturing viewer attention and securing the final purchase in one fluid interaction.
• Live video commerce demonstrates profound staying power in the region, establishing a sustainable sales channel despite fluctuating adoption rates in western markets.

The other side:

• Marshal’s profitability-first lesson is sound, but Indonesia’s e-commerce market is not becoming easier just because operators are more disciplined. Google, Temasek, and Bain’s e-Conomy SEA 2025 report projected Indonesia’s digital economy to approach US$100 billion in GMV in 2025, driven by video commerce, digital financial services, digital media, and AI adoption. That suggests the market remains attractive, but growth is fragmenting across channels, making it harder for infrastructure players to defend margins by simply focusing on what already works.
• The decentralized logistics strategy also carries execution risk. A 2026 review of Indonesia’s logistics sector notes that logistics costs remain structurally high because of fragmented multimodal networks, high domestic shipping margins, and sharp infrastructure gaps between western and eastern Indonesia. That means using local partners may reduce warehouse capex, but it can also introduce uneven service quality, inventory visibility problems, and weaker operational control across the archipelago.
• Video commerce is a real tailwind, but it may not automatically produce healthier economics. Bloomberg Technoz reported that TikTok Shop had become one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce players, with major GMV momentum after its Tokopedia tie-up. That creates opportunity for enablers like SIRCLO, but it also means brands may become more dependent on platform algorithms, creator commissions, discounts, and paid traffic, which can boost sales volume while still pressuring profit margins.