What a year 2011 has been! The development that we have seen in the Indonesia tech scene over the past year is remarkable. We’ve seen many great startups launch over the past year (see LocalBrand, Bouncity, and Meet Doctor for starters), and the term ‘startup’ itself is a hot topic among entrepreneurial university students.
The many communities that have sprouted the nation’s cities have contributed to this growth and curiosity. #StartupLokal is a great example of a community in which more than 250 people regularly attend its monthly meet-up. The spirit has spread to other cities and we expect that this will help the ecosystem as a whole.
A year of investment
While many start-ups have taken off, we have noted several acquisitions and funding over the year:
- Groupon acquired Disdus
- DealKeren by LivingSocial
- Detik.com acquired by Para Group.
- Tokopedia received Series B investment by CyberAgent Ventures (who opened their office in Jakarta recently)
- Apps Foundry raised money from Gobi Partners & Mitsui Globol.
As for seed investment:
- Ideosource invested in TouchTen
- Batavia Incubator invested in Bukalapak
- InvestIdea invested in Bistip
- East Ventures added SoybeanSoft, IdBlogNetwork to its portfolio.
Other than Venture Capitals, Incubator/Accelerator program have also came to Indonesia. East Ventures through East Ventures Alpha have incubated 6 start-ups for its first batch [1]. Project Eden, under #StartupLokal, have also launched and are still accepting applicants. Jakarta also has its own Founders Institute which has always provided an interesting Wednesday night for the founders-to-be.
An eventful year
2011 saw a number of awesome conferences and events in Indonesia as well:
#startuplokal meetup, via salsabeela on Flickr
- IDBYTE was attended by Facebook, LinkedIn and Indonesia’s own Kaskus.
- At IDBYTE we also had the annual Bubu Awards, dedicated to the Internet industry.
- There was also the Indigo Awards/Fellowship and INAICTA initiated by the government.
- We also saw the SparxUp awards by our friends over at DailySocial.
Big steps in e-commerce and mobile development
E-commerce is hot in every part of the world. It’s growing especially fast here in Indonesia. To speak about e-commerce means we have to talk about the many Groupon clones in the country. Although Groupon and Livingsocial have a presence here, there’s still a number of clones. As for the other e-Commerce players in Indonesia we have:
In social commerce:
As for the mobile space, while Blackberry appears to be stinking it up in the rest of the world, Indonesia remains a RIM stronghold. It has launched the Playbook and several smartphones. There were even people queuing for it!
But Android is proving a formidable opponent, with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Galaxy SII proving popular as well. Other brands like HTC and the low-cost Huawei are doing well, and local brands such as Tabulet are getting a surprising amount of interest too.
Still much left to do
Despite all this progress and potential in Indonesia, I still ask the same question: The investors are here, but where are the start-up founders?
Overall, I’m really thankful to be able to cover interesting start-ups and great events this year, and it has been fun working on the PO team. I’m looking forward to another great year in 2012!
- Disclosure: Joshua Kevin is an Associate in #StartupLokal and East Ventures. ↩