Alex P. Chandra or well-known as APC, is the man behind BPR Lestari’s success story. But who knows, that in the beginning of his journey, he jeopardized almost all of his money and career to buy a bank that almost bankrupt.

“At that time, our asset was only IDR 300 million with 70% bad debts.” said Alex P. Chandra.

Turns out, his brave move, with his colleagues, was not as easy as imagined. The first 4 years was the hardest time. There were no transactions at that time. Even no one interested in the job vacancy.

“It was hard to get a customer and employee as well.” said Alex P. Chandra.

He admitted that it was hard to build people’s trust. “The first one who trusted us was only my relatives and my close friends. It was so difficult to get a customer.” He added.

The rising moment was in 2003, when a new customer applied time deposit for IDR 25 million. “I see the light at the end of the tunnel.” He recalled.

His tenacity finally brought BPR Lestari to achieve IDR 54 billion assets and get the “Local Champion” label in 2005.

Nowadays, after 22 years, under Lestari Group management, BPR Lestari has been expanding the business, not only in Bali but also to all Java with total assets IDR 7,7 Trillion.

BPR Lestari brushed off the common stigma that BPR is an insufficient bank. With recent innovation and technology, BPR Lestari become easy to reach and offers competitive product and facilities to customers.

“Crisis is undeniable, just like this pandemic. Since last year, we are all in the process to overcome the storm. But in this hard time, BPR Lestari become more productive with tech innovation. We launched our digital product in this year.” said Alex P. Chandra. He hopes that BPR Lestari could compete with another big brand in Indonesia. “We dream big so BPR Lestari can be considered as equal to another banks. I will tell you the plan later” Alex P. Chandra closed the statement proudly.