Indonesia Weekly Review: X Archipelago Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [18 September-23 September]

From mergers and acquisitions to funding and contests, here is the next edition of the Indonesia weekly review – your weekly dose of the latest happenings from the Indonesia startup ecosystem.

East Ventures Launches Indonesia Focused $30 Mn Fund

Singapore-based VC firm East Ventures has announced the launch of its sixth fund with a corpus of $30 Mn. Through this new fund, East Ventures will look to back Seed to Series A technology startups in Southeast Asia. It will have a focus on Indonesia to leverage on the fund’s local expertise.

The fund will be managed by partners Willson Cuaca, Batara Eto and Taiga Matsuyama. This comes just months after East Ventures launched its fifth fund with a corpus of $27.5 Mn in January 2017.

The VC firm in an official statement said that more than 70% of companies who received funding rounds of series A and above in Indonesia were seeded by East Ventures. East Ventures has invested in 116 companies to date with an 83% survival rate.

88Spares.com To Support Indonesian Textile And Garment Industry

88Spares.com chief executive officer and co-founder Hartmut Molzahn is looking to launch a business to business (B2B) multi-vendor marketplace to assist the sector, as revealed in a recent post by Digital News Asia. To Molzahn, Indonesia is strategically placed and the country accounts for nearly 2% of global textiles and related products.

88Spares.com facilitates B2B transactions between buyers and sellers in the textile and garment manufacturing industry and specifically deals in industrial machine spare parts and consumables. As shared by the founder, they will serve a niche market and enhance the chances small and medium enterprises (SME) and family businesses of entering the sector.

The startup will generate revenue from every successful transaction and will take a percentage depending on the value of a transaction.

GreyOrange Marks Entry In Indonesia

GreyOrange, a multinational robotics company has announced its entry into Indonesia, with the installation of its 50^th   Sorter at Pos Indonesia.

Pos Indonesia is the national postal company which distributes parcels and mail across Indonesia, South East Asia’s largest and fastest growing ecommerce market. This high-performance advanced sortation system at Pos Indonesia strengthens GreyOrange’s hold in the last-mile delivery space and in a new geography.

Indonesia’s ecommerce market, estimated to be the third largest globally, behind China and India, is projected to reach USD130 Bn by 2020.  Pos Indonesia handles parcel and mail volume exceeding 500,000 pieces per day and provides fulfillment and last mile delivery for the government, state-owned enterprises, online entrepreneurs, and major ecommerce platforms – Lazada and BukaLapak among others.

Indonesian Startups Raised $3 Bn In 53 Investment Deals Between January & August 2017

As per a report by Google and management consulting firm AT Kearney, in the first eight months of 2017, Indonesian startups collectively raised $3 Bn in 53 investment deals.

Of these, around 43% Seed funding and approximately 30% Series A infusion. Nevertheless, late-stage investments have also increased since the beginning of the year, with 43% of the net $3 Bn investment taking place at Series C and later stages.

According to the study, titled “Indonesia Venture Capital Outlook 2017”, investment in the country’s startup market jumped 68 times in the last five years to around $1.4 Bn in 2016.

Indonesia’s ecommerce ecosystem has witnessed massive growth as a result of the recent tech boom in the archipelago. Currently worth $18 Bn, the country’s ecommerce market is poised to cross $130 Mn within the next three years, as per a report by The Straits Times.

As per the report by Google and AT Kearney, four other areas that need to be bolstered for accelerating the growth of the Indonesian startups are talent development, fiscal incentives, funding or exit options and startup facilitation.

Stay tuned for next week’s Indonesia Weekly Review.

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