Startup Asia is back in Jakarta, the bustling capital of Indonesia. Here’s our summary of all the experts and insights the packed audience enjoyed on day one of our conference.
Andy Zain intros tech in Indonesia
“Do you want to pet the tiger?” asked Andy Zain, the managing director of Mountain SEA Ventures, as he greeted the audience at the start of his keynote.
He then outlined the challenges and opportunities in Southeast Asia’s biggest market, going into detail in areas like epayments, ecommerce, and newer fields like fintech. See our full story here.
Great to see: Fintech Indonesia just announced at #startupasia, an association to help fix payments in Indonesia pic.twitter.com/t8M916BGE0
— William Fitzgerald (@william_fitz) November 26, 2014
How Traveloka flies under the radar
Ferry Unardi, the co-founder of Traveloka, says the site is now getting “tens of millions of visits” per month, which means – according to available data from competitors – the startup is now Indonesia’s top travel booking site. That’s despite some tough competition in the early days of this sector in Indonesia.
Unardi says he’s more of a software engineer than an entrepreneur. But later he decided to learn more about business after he realized that he’s “maybe not the best programmer.” See our full story here.
Co-founder @Traveloka is on stage now @StartupAsia #StartupAsia pic.twitter.com/ZTsF9kxBxs
— Andrias Ekoyuono (@andrias98) November 26, 2014
Cracking the code
Three experts on succeeding in Indonesia joined us on stage to reveal how they cracked the code and made tough choices in the growth stage. They are:
- Remco Lupker, co-founder of TokoBagus (now OLX)
- Steve Christian, co-founder and CEO, KapanLagi
- Ken Dean Lawadinata, chairman, Kaskus
So, what difficult decision did the trio face once they’d grown their businesses? Lupker says that marketing on TV was a “tough decision” but it paid off in terms of growing the classifieds site.
Dean says it was difficult to have to close the “adult” section of Kaskus, which culled a lot of popular content. “I enjoyed that content as a user,” he jokes.
Christian says it’s bad news if startup staffers want to get married. If a co-founder wants to get married soon, fire him, he jokes. “We need people to be concentrating on the business,” he adds.
Kaskus chairman eats own dog food; felt sad when they shut down “adult content” section which he loved! #StartupAsia pic.twitter.com/9cnhiU8nVV
— Casey Lau (@casey_lau) November 26, 2014
There was also a lot of talk about ecommerce. Dean says that people like Lazada, BerryBenka, and TokoBagus all executed well and are leading the way in online retail. That industry will still be exploding in the next few years, he believes. “Don’t be surprised if someone gets US$500 million” in funding, he states, referencing the recent US$100 million for Tokopedia.
Lupker agrees with the strong ecommerce outlook. “The potential’s in the verticals,” he says.
“It’s never been this good in Indonesia as it is now.” #StartupAsia
— Malavika Velayanikal (@vmalu) November 26, 2014
Country comparison: startups in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is diverse and difficult, so it’s not easy to grasp. These four founders in the discussion can give insights into Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They are:
- Tuan M. Pham, founder and CEO, Topica
- Patai Padungtin, principal/evangelist, Builk
- Bikesh Lakhmichand, founder of 1337 Ventures
- Paul Rivera, founder and CEO, Kalibrr
The full story on the session is here.
Country comparison discussion at #StartupAsia,Singapore seems to have done some things right that others are still struggling with @jfdiasia
— Moritz Heininger (@MoritzHeininger) November 26, 2014
‘english not an issue in Asia’ says @privera #StartupAsia ‘Come and use the talent in #Asia‘ for your #global business
— tyson hackwood (@tysonius) November 26, 2014
GrabTaxi likes it fast
Anthony Tan from Malaysia-based GrabTaxi comes onstage in a T-shirt emblazoned with “I like it fast.” He starts by talking about the inception of the taxi app. See our full story here.
GrabTaxi makes all their employee’s drive a cab for a day, so they know what it feels like #StartupAsia
— Soham Adwani (@SnazzyHam) November 26, 2014
Why localized products thrive in Indonesia
Now the afternoon sessions kick off. The topic is: how do you enter Indonesia the right way? For this session we look toward four people who have made the leap:
- Tesong Kim (VIP Plaza)
- Bob Bao (Baidu Indonesia)
- Paul Leishman (Coda payments)
- Weihan Liew (Mainspring)
Bao says that Baidu, China’s search engine giant, entered Indonesia with a handful of products for the sizable market of young web users. He adds that 90 percent of the local team is Indonesian.
For Kim, the appeal of Indonesia is all about mobile – and also the prospects of mobile commerce. But he adds that infrastructure problems like poor mobile data speeds are major problems.
Liew first entered Indonesia with what was an unusual strategy at the time – with a game fully localized into the Indonesian language and no English elements. He adds that local companies are actually best positioned to lead their home market because they understand customers – not just the people in the capital, but the full spread of society. That’s how Baidu beat Google or Taobao beat Ebay, he says.
Leishman believes that working with telcos in Indonesia is an essential part of doing things right in the country – though the monolithic companies are not easy to deal with.
Of course, localization can also be a minefield. Both Kim and Bao admit to missteps in Indonesia, both of which involved content that included images of scantily-clad women. Kim adds that you also need to think of the site’s UX and how people in the country prefer to browse a site.
All the onstage guests agree that localization strategies related to mobile are especially important.
In terms of advice to startups entering Indonesia, here’s what the four say: Kim says make the service simple but be prepared to meet high expectations; Bao says to work with local developers and match your consumers’ needs; Leishman says you need to move to Indonesia and meet-and-greet on the ground; Liew ends by saying that hiring in Indonesia is hard but it’s essential to get the right local team.
Telcos keen to scale Indonesian startups
Indonesia’s telco giants are primed to fill the funding shortfall in Indonesia and in turn find new partners to help them find new revenue streams. The three representatives are:
- Revie Sylviana, senior GM content and application, XL Axiata
- Teguh Wahyono, executive director, TelkomMetra
- Tauseef Riaz, senior group director, Ooredoo Group (running Indsosat in Indonesia)
The three reps gave 10-minute overviews of what each telco is doing to work with startups.
Learning from @rampok and telco representatives at #StartupAsia pic.twitter.com/V995UkQPPo
— Koen (@kuncoro) November 26, 2014
Investing in Indonesia: tread carefully or go gung-ho?
Our panel for this consists of:
- Roderick Purwana, director at Sinar Mas’ venture arm
- Stefan Jung, MD at Rocket Internet in Asia; partner at Monk’s Hill Ventures
- Nobuaki Kitagawa, managing director, CyberAgent Ventures
- Dmitry Levit, general partner, Digital Media Partners
Jung says that more and more entities are “waking up” to the opportunities in Indonesia in the past year. “There are new series A and series B funds that didn’t exist 12 months ago,” he points out. They’re a diverse bunch, from telcos to Softbank to local players like the VC arm of Sinar Mas. Those are now “filling the gap,” adds Kitagawa, which is a “big change” for Indonesia’s startup ecosystem.
Superstar #VC @Stefan_Jung sharing his insights about investing in Indonesia at #StartupAsia Jakarta pic.twitter.com/bTzEPAVYeR
— Benjamin Koellmann (@bkoellmann) November 26, 2014
Indonesia is looking for a big break startup that can expand globally and also serve as a local inspiration, such as what SoundCloud did in Berlin or Skype in Scandinavia. Levit agrees that Indonesia is now ready for that to happen – but he wouldn’t have said so last year.
“The pitfalls are much less now than three years ago” in Indonesia, Jung comments.
With this sea-change, people are now looking for the next trends in Indonesia. Purwana says entrepreneurs are now more savvy with funding and pursuing it more confidently. Jung says he’s seeing people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere now taking note of Indonesia and individual startups from the country. Levit adds nuance by saying that local ecosystems – from Nigeria to Jakarta – look to less simplistic business models (like doing a Valley version of something) and instead looking to more complex businesses that are making money and translating that success to their own country. They’re looking at sectors that are making money, Levit adds.
The panel then took questions from the Startup Asia audience on promising areas for rapid development in the country.
Is Twitter following a treasure map to Jakarta?
Rick Mulia, business head at Twitter Indonesia joined us for a fireside chat about the social media giant and its biz in this very social country. See our full story on this session.
Green room or is that red room of #StartupAsia Jakarta. Getting ready for my “fireside chat” pic.twitter.com/xbdOqhQHsB
— Rick Mulia (@rickmulia) November 26, 2014
What Indonesia can learn from tech ecosystems overseas
For the final session of the day, we have experts from outside Indonesia to give a different perspective.
- Sonita Lontoh, co-founder, Silicon Valley Asia Technology Alliance
- Takeshi Ebihara, founding general partner, Rebright Partners
- James Tan, managing partner, QuestVC
Lontoh represents the US (though she’s Indonesian by birth); Ebihara is Japan; Tan is China.
Ebihara says that one startup success can lead to 10 startup successes in the next generation – that’s the cycle of money, talent, and experience. He says it’s fine that Indonesia is decades behind Silicon Valley, because japan itself had a slow start on web entrepreneurship.
Tan says “China is unique but closed” in terms of language and the prohibitions put on the market. But the unique Chinese landscape still holds lessons for Indonesia in terms of localization, as seen with the local success of firms like Alibaba and Baidu.
Lontoh chimes in by saying that localization and adaptation makes sense since it’s very capital intensive to do true innovation on new models.
Where, then, are Indonesia’s “unicorns”? To put it in perspective, Lontoh says there have only been 39 unicorns in the US, meaning that they’re rare. So it’s wrong to focus only on such billion-dollar startups, she says, and instead people and VCs should look to successful startups in their own scale.
Looking beyond just startups and VCs, Lontoh says that the Indonesian government needs to look towards education and infrastructure if it’s to compete with the likes of Singapore. That means rule of law, less corruption, and a more solid business environment.
In terms of progress, Tan says that Indonesia is only about five years behind China in terms of the strength of startups, and that means tech giants and IPOs – and maybe a unicorn or two.
This is part of the coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2014, our event running on November 26 and 27. Follow along on Twitter with the #startupasia hashtag.
This post #StartupAsia Jakarta wrap-up – day 1 appeared first on Tech in Asia.
#StartupAsia Jakarta wrap-up – day 1
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