Indonesia Weekly Review: Three Archipelago Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [17 April – 22 April]

With digital being the new go-to strategy, Indonesia’s startup ecosystem has been hugely banking on this drive to foster growth and development. Here’s the latest scoop on the country’s startups in our dedicated weekly review.

KUK Acquires 17.6% Stake In Fintech Startup M Cash

Indonesian fintech company, Kresna Usaha Kreative (KUK), also known as Kresna Creative ventures, has acquired 17.6% stake in digital kiosk firm M Cash Integrasi (MCI).

As per a Deal Street Asia report, the transactional value was not disclosed for the deal. The move on KUK’s part aims to facilitate digital transactions for the company.

MCI’s digital kiosk provides facilities including physical cards, mobile SIM and e-money with automatic registration. It also provides services such as: phone credit top up, routine bill payment, mall/mart directory, advertisement (co-branding), voucher and promotions, flash sales points, ecommerce transactions, among other digital products.

With this deal, MCI aims to launch its latest digital kiosk, targeting 1,000 outlets in 2017 and to double the number by 2018.

Go-Jek Looks To Raise $1Bn To Tackle Competition

Indonesian ride hailing giant Go-Jek is reportedly looking to raise $1Bn in funding, as per a report by the Wall Street Journal.

The funding will be used to fuel its project of expanding across Southeast Asia, prominent destinations being Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam, to further compete with Uber and Grab’s presence in the region.

According to the report, the company is attempting to raise funds at a valuation of $2 Bn. It had earlier raised $550 Mn funding from Sequoia Capital India and Yuri Milner’s DST Global in August 2016.

YoStartups & Workout.Id Launch Indonesia Excelrate Weekend to Foster AgriTech

Seed-stage funding platform YoStartups has joined hands with Workout.id, which offers coworking spaces and seed investment in Indonesia, to launch an initiative to boost agritech startups in the country.

They have launched the Excelrate Weekend – a three-day and three-night event, scheduled for May 5-7, 2017 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The “Excelrate weekend” programme will have multiple mentoring sessions, each designed to improve entrepreneurship skills with experimental techniques in agricultural technology.

University Trilogi is supporting the programme and hosting the workshop. It will provide accommodation to 30 entrepreneurs who are coming from different parts of Indonesia to be a part of Excelrate.