2012: A Better Year for Startups in Indonesia?

2011 was a great year in many ways for Indonesia. But what will happen in 2012 for the country’s start-up ecosystem as a whole? Will we see more young entrepreneurs and companies take off? We have asked several key players in the Indonesia startup ecosystem for their educated predictions and outlooks for 2012:

Natali Ardianto (#StartupLokal Initiator & COO of Tiket.com):

With both domestic and foreign investments already coming in, and a lot of foreign startups and established IT companies setting up base right here in Indonesia, we can say that 2012’s pace will be a lot faster, and even more fierce in terms of competition. New incubators in the country last year will prove themselves in 2012 with a lot of their incubated startups coming to the surface and that’ll prove that their incubation works. There will be a lot of new startups coming in, some of them will pivot, and others will die. But that’s the nature of the industry, and we have to be ready to win or lose.

Andy Zain, director of the Jakarta Founder Institute and founder of Mobile Monday Indonesia)

With the shutdown of premium SMS businesses, the mobile industry may have further opportunities for accelerated growth. We hope to see carriers start looking into startups for creative mobile services and open the monetization option. At the same time the growth will be further fueled with more adoption of smarter devices, such as Android or MTK-based devices which are now maturing as mobile VAS platforms. Cheaper data rates and more educated users provide a huge consumer market base in Indonesia. For startups and new tech entrepreneurs this is an excellent opportunity.

Andi S. Boediman, partner at Ideosource:

Indonesia has a bright future and will grow due to local consumer demand. This is the right time to invest in content, media, and e-commerce. Investment in e-commerce should start soon to yield market share, though not necessarily the revenue. Also, invest in the supply chain and B2B.

We have three perspectives from three different backgrounds (startup, mobile, VC) and they are all indicating a positive 2012 for Indonesia. With regards to startups, I think while more and more will be launched, that also means more than a few will be going to the deadpool. The mobile content/games industry will be even bigger once the telcos and carriers embrace the credit payment option for users. Smartphone adoption will also grow with a fierce battle between Android, iOS and Blackberry here.