For the past few months VCs from the technology industries from all around the globe is visiting Jakarta to see the landscape, see if they can do something here in Indonesia. Indonesia has been standing under the spotlight ever since the Koprol-Yahoo and Disdus-Groupon acquisition, and also a huge contribution from the country’s amazing economic growth for the past few years, enabling investment security for all sectors including tech. As reported by MalaysiaInsider (quoting from Reuters), Indonesia’s GDP grow 6.5% in Q1 this year. Driven by strong consumption and investment, making Indonesia the biggest economy in South East Asia.
The past few months more and more people visit Jakarta and some of them took the time to visit our office and chat with the team. VCs, Private Equity and angel investors from US, China, Singapore, Hongkong and even Russia are currently doing research on Indonesia, and find a spot(s) for them to push in. And to make it more interesting, our local investors finally see the potential of tech/internet/mobile companies in Indonesia. Big groups like Djarum (our investor’s parent company), Bakrie, Sampoerna, MNC Group and not to mention almost all telco-companies is doing something with tech startups as well.
Just last week, I joined a panel discussion on “Emerging Market” at Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing together with panel speakers from Vietnam, Russia, India and Indonesia (represented by myself). The topic was hot, lots of interest from the audience about investment in emerging market. And after the panel ended, I had a meeting with several people to talk about investment in Indonesia and I can safely say that the interest from Chinese VCs to Indonesia is amazingly huge!
Apparently, investment interest in mature market such as US, Europe, Japan, China and other big market is somewhat decreasing with the rise of the new economy such as Indonesia, Brazil (+ other Latin American countries) and India. Although from technology innovation-side these emerging countries still need to learn a lot from US, most investors think that emerging countries still have a big room to grow and probably that means a bigger room for their money to grow as well.
Hey, fair enough! Just make sure, it’s a win-win deal.
The year 2010 has been the rise of Indonesian startups, events, communities, investments, and acquisitions happened. But 2011, i can guarantee that the same thing in 2010 will happen only on a much larger scale. More startups founded, more startups will die, more investors do funding rounds, more startups get funded, more startups will be acquired. A VC friend from China told me in November 2010, that he bet in Nov 2011 there will be 10x more investors in Indonesia compared to Nov 2010. And looks like it’s going to happen.
