Indo Tekno Podcast

ASTRO belongs to one of the fastest growing subsegments of online shopping: eGroceries. Since its founding 9 months ago, the company has built out 50 "hubs" (dark stores), and has grown 10x since early-2022 alone, on nearly 1 million downloads. Company Co-Founder & CEO Vincent Tjendra discusses an Indonesian e-grocery penetration target of 3-4% within 5 years, from 0.5% currently. He...

Some 9 in 10 workers experience burnout in Southeast Asia according to Justin Kim , the Cofounder and CEO of mental wellness coaching solution Ami . Jakarta moreover is a top 5 city in terms of burnout, a market in which Ami's SaaS-based subscription platform is growing rapidly.  Having introduced a personalized online coaching service primarily aimed at Indonesia's tech industry, Ami is...

"I'm still bullish Indonesia" declares returning podcast guest David Halpert , Founder of Prince Street Capital . A buyer of Amazon at around $8 when it pulled back in the 2000 crisis, David views Indonesia's private and publicly listed technology leaders as built-to-last, and sees longer term buying opportunities emerging amidst the ongoing correction. David is encouraged by r...

Indonesian domestic helpers working for employers overseas represent the single largest group of female salaried workers contributing to Indonesian households. A native of Ukraine, Dayana Yermolayeva is CEO and Cofounder of JiPay . She has created a growing family of services aimed at the 70m domestic workers across the globe who do not have access to financial services. Some 50% are entirely unba...

Reinier Musters joins us to review the latest breakthroughs in online SME lending in Indonesia, including critical improvements in credit scoring. Nikel , a company that Reinier founded in early 2019, has championed “embedded lending”, a turnkey solution which promises to empower a wide variety of platforms with a newfound ability to lend to Indonesian SME’s. Citing a fascinating collaboration wit...

In our first episode devoted to the corporate venture capital or CVC segment in Indonesia, the CEO of Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi (TMI), Marlin Siahaan , shares a number of examples of value-add that parentco Telkomsel has created in collaborating with TMI portfolio companies such as Finaccel , Halodoc , Evermos and Sekolah.mu . Marlin details TMI's key investment criteria, and also delves into e...

William Li shares with us the genesis of one of Indonesia's largest players in the fintech and e-commerce space, Akulaku . The business originated in early-2014 as HK-based cross-border remittances platform Silvrr E-Commerce. Having borne witness to the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again of China's P2P and broader fintech space, William has combined those learnings, with a keen understanding o...

Rifki Pratomo , the Cofounder and CEO of Andalin , joins us this week to discuss the massive inefficiencies that continue to plague the region's multi-trillion dollar cross-border trade. Andalin is a "digital freight forwarder" that is devoted to removing frictions in cross-border B2B commerce. Traditional freight forwarders for instance take on average  101 hours to provide a simpl...

Fresh Factory is one of a growing number of Indonesian start-ups to have gained entrance into the highly coveted Y-Combinator program. Fresh from having completed YC's demo day, company Cofounder and CFO Andre Septiano reflects on his key learnings from the program, which included how to achieve product-market fit, and dealing with failure.  Andre also addresses the massive opportunity that F...

Wafa Taftazani speaks of his path to founding no less than three start-ups within a three year period. Modal Rakyat extends working capital for startups and SMEs, while VCGamers is a gaming & NFT marketplace, and UpBanx is a fintech & marketplace for brands and creators in Indonesia. The three independent companies come together regularly, whether its Modal Rakyat assisting UpBanx customer...

In our first episode of Season 3, leading Southeast tech reporter for Reuters , Fanny Potkin , shares with us a number of fascinating anecdotes from her career covering the tech scene in Indonesia, from interviews of social media "buzzers" who leverage technology to influence election outcomes, to local entrepreneurs' humorous comparisons of Alibaba to a "nagging mother" a...

Alex Rusli is Cofounder of Digiasia Bios . The company offers the broadest portfolio of fintech licenses and solutions across Indonesia's start-up scene. Alex is amongst a small minority of start-up founders with previous big tech leadership experience, having served as CEO of telco giant Indosat before going "full-on founder". Our conversation ranges widely, from the challenges of...

The three lead authors of the annual e-Conomy SEA report join the Indo Tekno podcast to share further color on this seminal report on the state of the Southeast Asian internet economy. Stephanie Davis of Google offers fascinating insights around Indonesia's more aggressive embrace of payments compared to the region, and much higher internet participation from non-metro areas. Rohit Sipahimala...

Indonesia, an ecommerce market with an estimated 14 million online merchants, will likely grow to about USD80-90b in GMV by 2025. Opportunities thus abound for expert teams to acquire and partner with smaller merchants, in order to drive greater and greater operational efficiencies. Jeff Yuwono , Founder & CEO of "brand aggregator" Open Labs , discusses this massive roll-up opportuni...

Asian Development Bank research suggests that half of Indonesia's workforce of 135m is "underqualified for their jobs". Rohan Monga , CEO of leading online education platform Zenius , sees this skills crisis as being rooted in the K12 education system of 45m students. Zenius is helping drive the transformation of Indonesian pedagogy from rote knowledge-based instruction to a focus o...

In this episode, we discuss startup "cross pollination" between local entrepreneurs and their sea turtle (or "pulkam") cofounders returning to Indo from overseas work or study. "Indonesia Only" VC firm Intudo Ventures uniquely operates with founding general partners Eddy Chan and Patrick Yip sitting on opposite sides of the earth; one in Silicon Valley and the other i...

Cofounder of leading podcast platform Noice , Rado Ardian , estimates that the pandemic contributed to 3x growth in listenership in 2020. Noice's 3 top shows are comedy-oriented, an interesting reflection of the market's unique tastes. Intense "hyper-localization" of content will be crucial in driving up to 5x growth next year, as Noice strives to offer unique content to Indone...

In Indonesia, the Digital Divide remains a stubborn problem. While Indonesians spend around 6 hrs a day online, sadly "almost half of the adult population is still without internet access," a July World Bank report reveals. Barrett Comiskey and Dan Connor , Migo CEO and Indo Country Lead, respectively, reflect on the company's inroads to connecting all parts of the pyramid to intern...

COVID-19 has seriously rattled the already inefficient Indonesian blue collar sector, sending unemployment levels to an eight-year high. Leading end-to-end workforce management platform MyRobin targets a 74m large blue collar market which has suffered from monthly churn of 20%. Company cofounder Siddharth Kumar believes that the company has "cracked the code," not by herding workers onto...

Cybercrime is predicted to inflict damages totalling $6 trillion globally in 2021. If measured as a country,  it would be the world's third largest economy. Niki Luhur , Exec Chairman of VIDA , discusses the profound dangers of failing to implement more robust solutions around digital identity, privacy and cyber security. Niki argues that with emerging market economies digitizing at breakneck...

Bukalapak in August became Indonesia's first ever locally listed tech unicorn. Its robust revenue growth in its first reported quarter as a public company offers a compelling alternative narrative to characterizations of destructive hyper-competition across the country's e-commerce industry. Company President Teddy Oetomo points out that tier 2-4 cities, where its "Mitra Bukalapak&q...

Indonesia has soared from relative obscurity just a few years ago to represent more than 40% of Southeast Asia's mobile games market by revenues. Its developmental ecosystem however lags far behind. The country has a mere 1,200 games developers (China has 200,000). Founder of the country's largest game studio Agaté , Arief Widhiyasa , profiles many of the company's initiatives to cu...

With 73% of deaths in Indonesia caused by non-communicable diseases such as stroke, heart disease & diabetes; co-founder of next-generation healthy food company Lemonilo , Shinta Nurfauzia , describes her mission as using technology to make a healthy lifestyle accessible to everyone. Lemonilo often launches a new product exclusively online, crowd-sourcing feedback from its e-commerce customers...

Qoala has played a front-and-center role in modernizing Indonesia's hidebound insurance industry. Company Founder Harshet Lunani however views the role of agents in insurance as remaining key to increasing insurance penetration. Qoala seeks to "Uberise" insurance by removing the tedious complexities of pricing, underwriting and issuance services, and enabling anyone with personal ne...

Expert Ajisatria Suleiman joins our first episode devoted to Indonesia technology policy, to explain how policy is synthesised, where current policy priorities are focused, and what we can expect going forward. Having worked with The World Bank , Kominfo and other major institutions, Aji suggests that the public sector should invest more heavily into its own innovation and digitalization in order...