Claim OwnershipIndo Tekno Podcast
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© Alan Hellawell
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A podcast devoted to covering major trends that drive the Indonesian tech scene.
136 Episodes
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According to a report by Charities Aid Foundation, Indonesia is considered the world’s most generous nations. Kitabisa Co-founder and CEO Vikra Ijas attributes Indonesia's global leadership in giving over the past six years to "religious and cultural influences" that have shaped "a very collectivist society." Kitabisa is Indonesia's largest online crowdfunding platform for social and personal medical causes. The company last year acquired a life insurance company, largely as an extension to its Saling Jaga offering (trans. "protecting each other), which is a mutual aid program where members can protect each from critical illness. Vikraan, an Endeavor Entrepreneur, explains the diversification as a move beyond crowd-funding, which is "limited to a more reactive or responsive type of aid," to becoming "more strategic and prepared for future risks, which is facilitated license-wise through insurance." Kitabisa currently facilitates roughly one donation every second, and is moreover now emerging into one of the country's fastest-growing digital life insurance platforms. Vikra also reflects on the persistent guidance and support that Kitabisa's board members have offered the company, particularly e-commerce platform Bukalapak co-founders Achmad Zaky and Fajrin Rasyid.
Dayu Dara Permata, a 2022 Endeavor Entrepreneur, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the "three barriers to home ownership" that her start-up Pinhome is focused on eliminating. "There's just huge information asymmetry in the market," she observes. Dara moreover estimates that 70-80% of homebuyers require financing to transact, and most have few means to secure it properly. The third challenge relates to the sheer complexity and cost of any transaction, particularly in its final stages. The company has sought to digitize as much of this historically fraught process as possible through a marketplace architecture. Ensuring "seamless onboarding and making the journey of uploading, publishing listings, etc. frictionless" has been key. A five-year veteran of Gojek having led its Lifestyle & Commerce Product Group, Dara discusses how that role helped inspire Pinhome's novel "Home Services" offering which, among other things has driven down the platform's CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) while maximizing LTV (Customer Lifetime Value).
Indonesia represents some 30% of global seaweed production, a market with the opportunity to grow to $26.15 B by 2028. Dodon Yamin, Cofounder and CEO of BANYU, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the company's end-to-end farm technology platform for Indonesia's seaweed farmers. BANYU's value proposition sits upon three pillars: 1) enhanced seedling availability for Indonesia's farmers, 2) the application of blockchain-based smart contracts in order to improve commercially an otherwise inefficient and "leaky" industry supply chain, and 3) the use of IOT-based (Internet of Things) equipment and software to generate data that can be aggregated, stored and analysed for better farming results. Impressed by the success of fellow ITB alumnus Gibran Huzaifah at eFishery (podcasts Season 1 Episode 14 and Season 5 Episode 5), Dodon acknowledges the need for broader investor understanding of Indonesia's rising "aquatech" movement. BANYU has set an ambitious goal of 10x growth both this year and next, seeking to position itself as a key player in unlocking the country's seaweed opportunity.
Our latest Indo Tekno podcast guest, TJ Tham, comes from the relatively unorthodox background of a formally trained musician. TJ feels he is able to apply the more "right-brained" traditions of a musical upbringing across a number of facets in his role as co-founder of tjufoo, one of Indonesia's most successful "brand aggregators". Success in both roles depends upon a number of similar skills in TJ's mind. For instance, "music involves a lot of patterns." Similarly, identifying successful small Indonesian merchants requires a "keen eye for pattern recognition." A brand aggregator team like tjufoo commonly invests in or acquires small merchants, and then applies specific expertise to multiply the merchant's growth. tjufoo's favorite sectors are currently consumer electronics, home & living and FMCG (consumables). Although some of tjufoo's global brand aggregator peers have gone bankrupt of recent, the company's leadership team feels it has struck a more sustainable business model, not by solving a succession of discrete problems, but by introducing the "processes (and) the frameworks to help small merchants grow sustainably in the long term."
James Prananto joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the origins of his collaboration with fellow Kopi Kenangan cofounder Edward Tirtanata. "We wanted to prove that our model works...but the malls and landlords only wanted to deal with the big brands" in the early days. The pair's eventual success in raising high quality VC money helped solve this and other problems, raising Kopi Kenangan's profile and legitimacy. James and associates Fandy Cendrajaya and Christian Sutardi more recently founded Kopital Ventures to leverage their expertise and networks of contacts for the latest generation of Indonesian entrepreneurs. "It also allows me to give back to the community by growing the Indonesian startup ecosystem." The most defining value-add that Kopital offers its investee founders is "the amount of time that we spend with the founders." While James has found the latest crop of Indonesian entrepreneurs much more daring than their predecessors, he urges the country's younger founders to "dream bigger".
Indo Tekno guest Adi Nugroho's technological experimentation with mushrooms began nearly 15 years ago. His first major breakthroughs in exploiting "mycelium" as a sustainable alternative came in the construction industry, where it proved itself to be lightweight, less pollutive, fire-resistant and have good insulation properties. Adi's current venture, MYCL, has gained impressive traction in major industries such as automobiles, fashion and furniture, all of which seek natural and sustainable alternatives to the highly pollutive animal leather fabrication process. In harvesting a targeted 250,000 sq ft of mushrooms next year, MYCL can displace leather production which would otherwise create 430 tons of CO2 emissions, result in the slaughter of 7,000 cows and turn up to 1. 5 million liters of fresh water into tanning effluent.
The global e-book market totalled USD24 billion last year. KaryaKarsa founder Ario Tamat discusses the company's path to creating a viable self-serve online publishing platform, one of the first to enable significant monetization opportunities for Indonesia's writers, and creators of other sorts of media; from audio to video to comics to photographs. A talented musician himself, Ario and cofounders Pribadi Prananta and the late Aria Rajasa asked: "Why not create a platform where fans could give money directly to their favorite creators in return for them continuing to create their favorite work?" The business indeed seems to have found successful product-market fit selling weekly serialized stories. "We have 240,000 creators. Some 50% of them are writers and our current user base is 1.8 million registered users". An EBITDA-positive business, the company intends to add further categories and functionality to perpetuate its nearly 2X growth year-on-year.
Gibran Huzaifah returns for the first time since his last appearance on the Indo Tekno podcast three and a half years ago to offer updates on the eFishery business and answer big picture questions on topics such as personal development, leadership and the nature of entrepreneurship in Indonesia. eFishery has grown meteorically, from serving 7,000 fish farmers as of our last episode in August, 2020, to more than 200,000 farmers today. Gibran recounts organizational growing pains centered around unforeseen headcount and leadership expansion. Gibran also details the company's growing profusion of financial services (many offered through third party partners). These services are all powered by eFishery's big data-enabled credit scoring capabilities. eFishery is "the largest aquaculture technology company globally right now," he states. Gibran also walks listeners through eFishery's entry into the Indian market, and discusses his motivations to export to the competitive US market.
"An entrepreneur must start from empathy for those people that feel the problem," shared Wildiyanto Yawin, cofounder of SME credit analytics platform Finskor, "and by that motivation they bring impact and help others by solving the problem. " Finskor is an AI company providing SaaS to automate and digitize the credit analytics process for Indonesia's SME's. With IDR600 trillion in credit needs that cannot be served by traditional banks, Finskor labors intensively to build enough trust to onboard these banks, many of which are intensely risk averse and are (understandably) concerned over data security. The company leverages AI to replace the error-prone manual process of reviewing hundreds of pages of an SME's financial statements, which serves to reduce fraud and create much more reliable inputs for credit scoring. Yawin views Finskor's longer term success in advancing AI to compensate for Indonesia's notoriously fractured and "noisy" financial data sources.
Indonesia's high-value users (HVU's) "spend almost 7x more than the average digital consumer in the country" states Sapna Chadha, VP for SEA and South Asia at Google. While addressing the needs of the "HVU" will remain critical, "almost twice the opportunity is with that of non-high value users," she added. "Three quarters of non-high value users say that they would engage if their barriers were addressed." Sapna and fellow guest Florian Hoppe, Partner and Head of Vector in Asia-Pacific, Bain & Company, envision innovations in areas such as logistics and new online shopping functionality unlocking much of this growth potential. Our two guests join the Indo Tekno podcast to address the newly released 8th edition of the e-Conomy SEA report, titled "Reaching new heights: navigating the path to profitable growth". Florian additionally proposes a path to a resumption in Indo tech IPO's, one in which increasingly realistic entry valuations, and improving monetisation models, unlock a record USD16b in dry powder as of YE 2022. The team expects Indonesia's digital economy growth to reaccelerate from 8% YoY this year to a 15% CAGR, reaching ~$110B by 2025.
Having come from a family background in budget hotels, Carina Lukito began as a serial entrepreneur in the consumer goods & services space. Instances of malnutrition amongst her nieces specifically propelled her to cofound Little Joy, which is Indonesia’s fastest-growing Mom and Baby brand for "the first 1,000 days of a child." Nearly 1 of 3 babies is malnourished, and there is still a ~50% child mortality rate under one year old. Stunting moreover among Indonesia's children remains high. The platform is comprised of four components: Joyi World, MomsJoy, Dapur Little Joy and LittleJoyEdu, all designed to meet the holistic needs of Indonesia's 15m babies and 24m pregnant & lactating mothers. Little Joy leverages big data to do everything from optimizing baby food formulations to customizing advice for expectant and new moms. While Little Joy seeks to trump Indonesia's longstanding brands by addressing the unique needs of the latest generation of mothers, "ensuring the efficient and timely distribution of our product to every corner of the country" remains the company's most complex endeavor.
Goldman Sachs Head of SE Asia investment banking Andy Tai returns to the Indo Tekno podcast to summarize how global financial markets currently view Indonesia's tech sector. With investor enthusiasm having waned across much of tech and emerging markets over the past few years, Andy specifically reflects on the unprecedented scrutiny placed on incremental marketing spend by Indonesia's leading tech start-ups - emblematic of growing insistence on profitability over growth-at-all-costs. He also specifically calls out Agritech as a sector of particular interest amongst Indo tech-focused investors, and growing expectations around ESG (environmental social and governance) from institutional investors as companies begin to round the bend to IPO. Andy also revisits his previous views on the importance of best-in-class corporate governance for Indonesian start-ups, and urges founders not to underestimate the enormity of IPO preparation.
Ryan Manafe joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss both the difficulties and long-term rewards of staying true to rural e-commerce. While many of Indonesia's "warungtech" platforms claim to focus on enabling commerce in Tiers 3 & 4, many invariably retreat to urban markets such as Jakarta and Surabaya, given higher population density, consumer tech savviness and digital connectivity. Dagangan, which Ryan cofounded 4.5 years ago, maintains a disciplined focus on Indonesia's rural markets, home to 87% of the country's population and 75% of its household spending. Seeing far less competition in these regions, Dagangan leverages a "hub-and-spoke" architecture to access a larger profit pool compared to Indonesia's hyper-competitive Tier 1 markets. Ryan devotes a significant part of our discussion to the importance of meditation and mindfulness in navigating through today's challenges such as fund-raising and shifting competitive terrain.
“My articles (come) from a place of affection and empathy towards Indonesia”, says Leigh McKiernon, a leading headhunter in Indonesia. Leigh has cultivated a loyal social media following with his witty commentary on the big money, big personalities and big excesses that have resulted from Indonesia’s uninterrupted run in the tech space for the past decade. Leigh in one article humorously summarises an entirely fictionalised “Aplikaskars” awards event which he describes as “a glamorous event put on by the Indonesian tech startup community celebrating the industry’s successes and failures.” Leigh seeks to “explore the limits of the absurd” in other humorous articles such as “Forbes 30 Under 30: A Mirage of Meritocracy” and “The False Modesty Olympics: When Being ‘Humbled’ Turns into a Competitive Spectacle.” All of Leigh’s work carries more than just a kernel of truth about the excesses of the industry.One of Leigh’s most active focuses in executive recruitment and consulting is cultivating high retention corporate cultures amongst Indo’s leading tech companies. “Naturally when you double in size over a three month or a six month period, it's going to pose challenge for even the most experienced leaders.”
Christian Limawan joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the mission criticality of sourcing truly relevant data, in order to properly serve Indonesia's tens of millions of underbanked MSME's. Unlike most emerging names in Indonesia's credit scoring space which analyze individual consumer credit worthiness, AIForesee has an exclusive B2B focus on the "productive segment" of enterprise, assisting financial institutions to improve lending to the country's MSME's. Christian reflects on the importance of being part of a broader fintech ecosystem to AIForesee's successful credit scoring, from the ease of new client referral and participation in broader "full-service" solutions with fellow group companies, to improved access to alternative data. AIForesee is a member of the Investree ecosystem, and partners closely with other group companies such as E-Procurement platform Mbiz and MSME aggregator Sahabat Bisnis; as well as other external data partners.
Former CEO of leading Indonesian digital asset exchange Tokocrypto, Pang Xue Kai, joins the Indo Tekno program to discuss his latest venture, Untukmu.AI, which involves the application of artificial intelligence to online gift-giving in Indonesia. Synthesizing disparate elements such as a recipient's preferences, budget considerations, the specific occasion and numerous other factors; Untukmu.AI seeks to vastly improve discovery in the on-line purchasing process. A native Singaporean, Xue Kai describes the genesis of Tokocypto as an attempt to address "great market inefficiencies" in the digital currency space. He also discusses the patchwork of talents that he and cofounders Estelle Van Der Linden, Oceane Alagia and Cory Pang bring together in the critical process of "ideation".
While Indonesia's leading e-commerce platforms have evolved massively over the past decade, many of the country's online merchants complain of the exorbitant fees they must pay the marketplaces, and the fact that they have little visibility into the customer buying from their storefront. Gery Nugraha and fellow cofounders Albert Theodore and Faza Fahleraz, all recent grads of ITB, offer "Checkout-as-a-Service", whereby their start-up SnapLink (formerly Payable) allows merchants to operate with full e-commerce capabilities on platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp. SnapLink is a turnkey solution which allows the small merchant to record new orders, calculate postage, receive payments, enable delivery and offer various other services. The seller can reestablish a direct relationship with the buyer and can avoid heavy commissions, platform fees & advertising expense.
With only 2.1% of the country's students deemed of “very active” physical fitness levels, seeking a digital means of improving access to wellbeing has achieved paramount importance in Indonesia. Fauzan Gani joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss his start-up DOOgether's integrated solutions for physical fitness, mental wellbeing and nutrition. Fauzan addresses how DOOgether has begun to differentiate its offering across Indonesia's Tiers 1, 2 and 3 markets. DOOfit is the company’s “Classpass-like” marketplace for 3rd party wellness and fitness studios, while DOOspace is a turnkey operator of fitness spaces for interested housing complexes, buildings and other open spaces. The two categories have take rates between 10-20%, although DOOgether sees significant additional revenue opportunity for ancillary services in its B2B business.
Founder Irzan Raditya joins the Indo Tekno podcast to address the profound deepening in functionality that the application of artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled to his earlier SMS-based digital assistant start-up YesBoss, in its 8+ year evolution into what is today Indonesia's leading chatbot platform, Kata.ai. With more than 170 paying enterprise customers, Kata.ai overlays generative AI to enhance Indonesia's near-ubiquitous use of "chat commerce" over platforms such as WhatsApp. Irzan traces the genesis of his career as a prolific serial entrepreneur to the age of eight, when he made a good business out of drawing caricatures for his classmates. Irzan also offers insightful suggestions around safeguards to any potential abuse of AI in the future.
Indonesia is the fastest growing insurance market in the world. Giacomo Ficari joins us to discuss how his start-up LifePal seeks to remove many of the frictions and the inefficiencies associated with the traditional agent-driven approach, to apply more of a direct-to-consumer model for Indo customers. A member of the Lazada "diaspora", Giacomo discusses his journey from banking in London to various entrepreneurial roles in Southeast Asia, striking a complementarity with his three fellow cofounders at LifePal, and how the company is now reimagining the insurance journey around massive verticals such as automobiles.
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