Time does fly, now that 2014 is only in days. What was in and out during the year? DailySocial has summed up all of interesting facts and figures which occurred during 2014 into a comprehensive kaleidoscope. Enjoy!
January 2014
The shutting down of Jajalindo started the month in an unpleasant way, even though the Series C funding that Path received, which reached $25 million (more than Rp 304 billion) covered all the tears with a glimpse of hope. This time, the funding was led by Bakrie Global Group. In this month, Abraresto, PricePanda, DapurMasak, and Bilna also got invested.
February 2014
In the second month of the year, the main attraction was the $1 billion investment that being carried out by Foxconn to establish its factory in DKI Jakarta. The decision was strengthened with a MoU ratified by Foxconn’s Chairman Terry Gou and DKI Jakarta’s Governor at that moment, Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Furthermore, the acquisition of Viber by Rakuten and Alivenotdead by migg33 (migme) also became the center of attraction. Other pleasant headlines were about the additional funding that Foodpanda and Bukalapak received.
March 2014
In March, XL Axiata finally completed their long-awaited attempt of acquiring Axis. The telco titan succeeded in securing their competitor’s shares for $865 million (more than Rp 9 trillion). In the same month, Elevenia was officially born, while a number of startups, which are Luxola, BerryKitchen, and JFDI, successfully sealed the investments.
April 2014
April marked Shopdeca as the very first local e-commerce platform which goes global by expanding its business in Singapore and acquiring Eriin after sealing an investment from Polaris Digimedia. Still in April, CookPad fully acquired DapurMasak, and Lamudi, after receiving $7 million investment, was officially launched in Indonesia.
May 2014
Tokobagus made an interesting maneuver by re-branding itself into OLX Indonesia. OLX is an international e-commerce brand owned by Naspers, Tokobagus’ parent company, since 2010. In the same month, PriceArea got acquired by South Korea-based Yello Mobile which aimed to expand its business in Southeast Asian market.
June 2014
Three startups which serve taxi, or taxi-like, services were launched in Indonesia at practically the same time. There was Easy Taxi, which had partnered with four taxi operators in Jakarta by the time it was being launched. Another provider was GrabTaxi which offers a direct taxi order service to customers. Last but not least, probably the most famous of those three, Uber, although it cannot be really called as a taxi service provider.
July 2014
HotelQuickly sealed a Series A-1 funding which reached $4.5 million (around 52 billion) from a group of investors led by Gree Japan in this month. Still in July, Hubud Bali pronounced itself as the very first co-working space in Indonesia which accepts bitcoin as one of valid currencies.
August 2014
This month marked a glorious accomplishment by an Indonesian startup. 8Villages, although it’s not fully based in Indonesia, got introduced in Myanmar by Ooredoo Myanmar. There, the startup is known as “The Farmer”. Another Indonesian startup which achieved such achievement was Adskom. The startup received a $850 thousand funding and planned to expand its business to neighboring countries. In this month, Tripvisto also sealed an investment from East Ventures.
September 2014
This month noted a seed funding that was received by Mokapos mobile point-of-sale from East Ventures.
October 2014
October was the best. Tokopedia became the first Indonesian startup which sealed $100 million investment, the highest in number so far. This investment came from Sequoia Capital and Softbank. Other investments were successfully sealed by KerjaDulu and mclinica. Although they were not as big as what Tokopedia got, but they were still noteworthy. This month also marked an acquisition made by EMTEK Group towards Karir.com.
November 2014
There were plenty of wonderful news came from this month, but the top would be the one telling about a merger between OLX and Berniaga. These two giants will go on by using OLX’s entity from that moment on.
December 2014
2014 was closed by shocking news suggesting that Yahoo! will completely shut its office in Indonesia by the end of this year. The decision was taken according to Yahoo!’s global plan, which is to focus more on its U.S market.
