Indonesia Weekly Review: 4 Archipelago Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [21 August-26 August]

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.

China’s JD.com Invests $100 Mn In GoJek

Go-Jek has raised about $100 Mn from JD.com. The startup is raising up to $1 Bn from existing and new investors in its latest funding round and has a pre-money valuation of about $2.5 Bn.

Its other investors include global private equity firms KKR & Co and Warburg Pincus as well as venture capitalist Sequoia Capital.

JD.com has invested in Indonesian ride-hailing startup Go-Jek, to tap growth in Southeast Asian mobile-based services.

VR Platform Immersv Raises $10.5 Mn Series A Funding

Indonesia-based Immersv, an interactive advertising platform for Mobile 360 and Virtual Reality, has completed a $10.5 Mn Series A round of financing led by Rogers Venture Partners.

Asian investors including East Ventures, HTC Vive and GREE as well as Foundation Capital, The Venture Reality Fund, Initial Capital, MCJ Co. Ltd., i-mobile, Metaps and Gigi Levy also joined the round.

Rogers Venture Partners General Partner, Paul Sestili, and Gumi’s Founder and CEO, Hironao Kunimitsu, have joined Immersv’s Board of Directors.

Poor Logistics Infrastructure Impeding Ecommerce Growth In Indonesia: Jack Ma

Alibaba founder and the newly-crowned richest person in Asia, Jack Ma, has identified inadequate logistics infrastructure as the key challenge impeding the growth of ecommerce industry in Indonesia.

Jack Ma made these observations during a recent meeting in Beijing with the current Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Darmin Nasution, and Minister of Communications and Informatics, Rudiantara.

Jack Ma serves as an official advisor to the Indonesian government and is currently working with a specialised committee to create a roadmap for Indonesia’s technological future. The committee’s efforts are geared towards solving a range of complex issues related to startup funding, logistics infrastructure, communications support, cybersecurity, education, and taxation.

Indonesia’s Supreme Court Overrules Transport Ministry Regulations For Taxi Aggregators

The Supreme Court of Indonesia has annulled a government regulation on online taxi aggregators. The decision was taken after the regulation was found to be in contradiction with the higher laws and regulations.

In April 2017, the Ministry of Transportation had imposed a regulation to accommodate popular services such as Go-Jek, Grab and Uber etc. in the country’s transportation system. The regulation mandated that these cab aggregators had the vehicles registered under the company, instead of the driver partners. Apart from this, regulations like a cap on the number of vehicles, minimum fares, etc., were also imposed.

Following this, the driver partners argued that these regulations were a hurdle to their incomes. They appealed the Supreme Court to take their grievances into consideration.

Following the Supreme Court decision, the Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said that the ministry will study the decision. He also assured that the ministry will come up with a new regulation within the next three months.

Stay tuned for next week’s Indonesia Weekly Review.