Indo Tekno Podcast

Brankas leads Indonesia's nascent "Open Banking" movement. It seeks to address friction in digital banking, collapse costly layers of middlemen, and change business models on payments, credit scoring and more. Brankas CEO Todd Schweitzer and CPO Mike Dickinson share views on Indonesia's banking and payments systems today, and offer some predictions on the future of Indonesian O...

Kevin Aluwi , co-founder and co-CEO of Gojek , offers a candid, brick-by-brick account of the company's most formative early successes and challenges; from the insights that informed the creation of GoFood, to touch-and-go moments in fund-raising. Join us as Kevin offers his own definition of "super-app", reflects on the complexities of creating a successful development team, and di...

"50% of our borrowers are non-Muslim", states Dima Djani , CEO of leading Sharia finance platform ALAMI . Sharia banking's broad appeal to millennials with its "transparency, social impact, and prudent and responsible qualities" should raise its weighting in Indonesia's banking sector from 6% currently to a government target of 15% by 2023. Join us as Dima outlines AL...

We are in the midst of an impact investing boom. Guest Dondi Hananto of Patamar Capital dispels many misconceptions around impact investing. He argues that intensive measurement of both "bottom lines" (Financial/Operational and Impact) can deliver outsized returns and do social & environmental good at the same time. Dondi shares powerful stories of mission-based portfolio companies m...

Gabriel Frans , Cofounder & CEO of CrediBook , discusses how his company seeks to modernize traditional cash management amongst Indonesia's 56m SME's. Gabriel describes the benefits of building joint solutions with long time associate Hendra Kwik of PayFazz . He also explains the mystique of his alma mater, leading engineering school ITB. A man of many talents, Gabriel created this w...

Few internet platforms have the ability to affect change on such a massive scale as Google. The company has trained 1.7m Indonesian business owners (500,000 female), and seeks to support 45m students with their distance learning needs. Randy Jusuf , MD for Google Indonesia , walks us through the company's massive efforts to bring more Indonesians online, support 22,000 school teachers in thei...

In our first podcast of 2021, Sabrina and Sarah Soewatdy , co-founders of leading Indonesia co-living platform Rukita , discuss how they have revolutionized Indonesia's traditional "kost" model. They also reflect on how COVID led to dramatic yet successful shifts in Rukita's customer focus, the blatant honesty between sister/co-founders, and the digital demands of Indonesia&apo...

"I would expect Indonesian IPO's in 2021 and 2022," states Delano Musafer , Head of Asia-Pacific Capital Markets for the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). Delano is joined in the third episode of our “From Warung to Wall Street” series by his colleague Jennie Dong, Head of SPAC’s at the NYSE. Jennie’s insights are very timely, given recent news that Peter Thiel’s Bridgetown SPAC (spec...

A November Ernst and Young report reveals that nearly a third of those without a car surveyed intend to buy a car in the next six months.  They cite the COVID-19 pandemic, originally blamed for a near paralysis in car-buying earlier in 2022, as one of the top reasons for the planned surge in purchase activity. Aaron Tan and Aditya Lesmana , cofounders of Carro , Southeast Asia's largest autom...

"Talent Shortage" is far-and-away the biggest challenge cited by Indonesian tech employers in this year's RGF HR report . Our guest Antonio Mazza , co-founder of leading Indonesia-based recruitment firm WeNetwork , reveals that 80% of hiring managers claim that the shortage of tech talent is so severe that it has negatively impacted speed of product development. Not surprisingly, Pr...

The Indonesian authorities have "done a great job in negotiating with the COVID vaccine suppliers for advanced commitments," says today's Indo Tekno Podcast guest, Farouk Meralli of mClinica . "Where it's going to get very difficult is distribution. This is a logistics effort like we've never seen before." mClinica is Southeast Asia's largest online pharmacy...

 "Our advantage is our people," states George Hendrata , CEO of Indonesian online travel agent (OTA) Tiket.com . The term "people" in fact comes up no less than 30 times in our interview, more than four times as frequently as the average guest on the Indo Tekno podcast. This philosophy, quite common throughout the broader Djarum Group, espouses not just Tiket.com employees, but...

Nearly 50% of grocery delivery customers in the past six months had never used such services prior to COVID, according to the new Google Temasek Bain " e-Conomy SEA 2020 " report. In this episode, we invite on Guillem Segarra , CEO of HappyFresh . Guillem discusses this radical growth in demand; how HappyFresh as the region's leading pure-play has dealt with an influx of competition...

Credit card ownership in Indonesia has risen at an anaemic 2.3% CAGR over the past 10 years, this despite an absolute burgeoning in use cases such as e-commerce and other forms of consumption in the country. JP Morgan for instance last year estimated that there were a mere 0.59 e-commerce enabled debit cards per capita and 0.07 e-commerce enabled credit cards per capita in Indonesia. Our guest thi...

"I try to spend every day...with somebody who is in the tech space," comments Pak Gita Wirjawan . This week's guest to the Indo Tekno Podcast brings to bear insights from a sweeping career which ranges from government service at the highest levels, to extensive involvement in Indonesia's tech ecosystem as entrepreneurial investor and mentor. Most widely known as Indonesia'...

(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia di sini ) ... While the average Indonesian has always had an appreciation of gold as a reliable investment, the ravages of COVID have driven massive volumes into this "safe haven" asset. The user base of Indonesia's leading digital gold and investment platform Pluang for instance has grown a stunning 20 times since the start of the pandemic. Gold moreover...

Indonesia's and China's technology ecosystems continue to interweave and overlap. BAce Capital is a venture firm whose very mission is to connect markets such as Indonesia to China's dynamic tech eco-system. Claiming Ant Financial as its anchor LP, the firm was founded by Ant and Alibaba veterans Benny Chen and "KK" Kshitij Karundia . In this instalment of Sino Indo Tekno,...

(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia di sini ) Our guest this week, Pandu Sjahrir , is one of Indonesia's best known tech investors and operating executives. Actively involved in the management of four leading companies, Pandu was also recently appointed Board Member of the Indonesia Stock Exchange (or IDX). He joins us to outline the growing attractions of IPO'ing on the IDX for Indonesia's...

We are pleased to invite back to Indo Tekno studios Andy Tai , Managing Director at Goldman Sachs , in order to explore the SPAC ("Special Purpose Acquisition Company") as a means of bringing promising Indonesian tech companies to the public markets. This marks the second episode of our "From Warung to Wall Street" podcast series. A SPAC is a company which, at the outset has no...

(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia di sini ) FACT : Indonesia spends only 3.0% of its GDP on healthcare . The US spends 17.1%. China spends 5.2%. FACT : According to the World Health Organization, Indonesia has a mere 0.4 physicians per 1,000 people . The US has 2.6, while China has 2. Today's guest, Jonathan Sudharta , Cofounder and CEO of leading healthtech platform Halodoc , indicates that COVID...

(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia di sini ) The term “tenacity” seems to be the one attribute that today’s guest has shown at every major point in her career. Gita Sjahrir , CEO of R Fitness , describes how a debilitating case of rheumatoid arthritis helped inform her decision to become one of Jakarta’s most dynamic entrepreneurs in the health and wellness space.  Tenacity also clearly came into play as...

In our new series “ Hari-Hari Awal ” (in English, “The Early Days”), we begin to explore companies that have emerged over the years as defining pillars of the Indonesian internet ecosystem. Our inaugural instalment follows the rise of Tokopedia from its very first days, through its path to becoming far and away Indonesia’s most dominant native e-commerce platform today.  Tokopedia Cofounder and Vi...

Indonesia is the world’s second largest producer of fish. Our guest Gibran Huzaifah and his company eFishery are out to leverage technology in order to disintermediate centuries of inefficient practices and waste that have crept into the industry. Indonesia has 3.3m fish farmers, many of whom barely scrape by. They are wedged between uneconomical fish feed pricing as their main input on one hand,...

Ant Financial’s IPO filing last week revealed that the Chinese fintech juggernaut currently boasts more than one billion annual active users, offering a glimpse into how utterly pervasive online financial services could become in markets such as Indonesia. Indonesia’s fintech scene indeed continues to grow strongly by most measures, and this week’s Indo Tekno guest, Anderson Sumarli , CEO and Cofo...

Trucking in Indonesia is clearly ripe for disintermediation: annual logistics spend represents a massive 26% of GDP. The sector moreover is profoundly fragmented: 75% of trucking companies have 20 trucks or less, and a massive amount of the USD38b in annual trucking spend disappears into a labyrinth of middlemen. Tiger Fang , Co-founder & CEO at Kargo Technologies , joins us this week to discu...