Having come from a family background in budget hotels, Carina Lukito began as a serial entrepreneur in the consumer goods & services space. Instances of malnutrition amongst her nieces specifically propelled her to cofound Little Joy, which is Indonesia’s fastest-growing Mom and Baby brand for "the first 1,000 days of a child." Nearly 1 of 3 babies is malnourished, and there is still a ~50% child mortality rate under one year old. Stunting moreover among Indonesia's children remains high. The platform is comprised of four components: Joyi World, MomsJoy, Dapur Little Joy and LittleJoyEdu, all designed to meet the holistic needs of Indonesia's 15m babies and 24m pregnant & lactating mothers. Little Joy leverages big data to do everything from optimizing baby food formulations to customizing advice for expectant and new moms. While Little Joy seeks to trump Indonesia's longstanding brands by addressing the unique needs of the latest generation of mothers, "ensuring the efficient and timely distribution of our product to every corner of the country" remains the company's most complex endeavor.

Goldman Sachs Head of SE Asia investment banking Andy Tai returns to the Indo Tekno podcast to summarize how global financial markets currently view Indonesia's tech sector. With investor enthusiasm having waned across much of tech and emerging markets over the past few years, Andy specifically reflects on the unprecedented scrutiny placed on incremental marketing spend by Indonesia's leading tech start-ups - emblematic of growing insistence on profitability over growth-at-all-costs. He also specifically calls out Agritech as a sector of particular interest amongst Indo tech-focused investors, and growing expectations around ESG (environmental social and governance) from institutional investors as companies begin to round the bend to IPO. Andy also revisits his previous views on the importance of best-in-class corporate governance for Indonesian start-ups, and urges founders not to underestimate the enormity of IPO preparation. 

“My articles (come) from a place of affection and empathy towards Indonesia”, says Leigh McKiernon, a leading headhunter in Indonesia. Leigh has cultivated a loyal social media following with his witty commentary on the big money, big personalities and big excesses that have resulted from Indonesia’s uninterrupted run in the tech space for the past decade.

Leigh in one article humorously summarises an entirely fictionalised “Aplikaskars” awards event which he describes as “a glamorous event put on by the Indonesian tech startup community celebrating the industry’s successes and failures.” Leigh seeks to “explore the limits of the absurd” in other humorous articles such as “Forbes 30 Under 30: A Mirage of Meritocracy” and “The False Modesty Olympics: When Being ‘Humbled’ Turns into a Competitive Spectacle.” All of Leigh’s work carries more than just a kernel of truth about the excesses of the industry.

One of Leigh’s most active focuses in executive recruitment and consulting is cultivating high retention corporate cultures amongst Indo’s leading tech companies. “Naturally when you double in size over a three month or a six month period, it's going to pose challenge for even the most experienced leaders.”

Christian Limawan joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the mission criticality of sourcing truly relevant data, in order to properly serve Indonesia's tens of millions of underbanked MSME's. Unlike most emerging names in Indonesia's credit scoring space which analyze individual consumer credit worthiness, AIForesee has an exclusive B2B focus on the "productive segment" of enterprise, assisting financial institutions to improve lending to the country's MSME's. Christian reflects on the importance of being part of a broader fintech ecosystem to AIForesee's successful credit scoring, from the ease of new client referral and participation in broader "full-service" solutions with fellow group companies, to improved access to alternative data. AIForesee is a member of the Investree ecosystem, and partners closely with other group companies such as E-Procurement platform Mbiz and MSME aggregator Sahabat Bisnis; as well as other external data partners.

Former CEO of leading Indonesian digital asset exchange Tokocrypto, Pang Xue Kai, joins the Indo Tekno program to discuss his latest venture, Untukmu.AI, which involves the application of artificial intelligence to online gift-giving in Indonesia. Synthesizing disparate elements such as a recipient's preferences, budget considerations, the specific occasion and numerous other factors; Untukmu.AI seeks to vastly improve discovery in the on-line purchasing process. A native Singaporean, Xue Kai describes the genesis of Tokocypto as an attempt to address "great market inefficiencies" in the digital currency space. He also discusses the patchwork of talents that he and cofounders Estelle Van Der Linden, Oceane Alagia and Cory Pang  bring together in the critical process of "ideation".

While Indonesia's leading e-commerce platforms have evolved massively over the past decade, many of the country's online merchants complain of the exorbitant fees they must pay the marketplaces, and the fact that they have little visibility into the customer buying from their storefront. Gery Nugraha and fellow cofounders Albert Theodore and Faza Fahleraz, all recent grads of ITB, offer "Checkout-as-a-Service", whereby their start-up SnapLink (formerly Payable) allows merchants to operate with full e-commerce capabilities on platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp. SnapLink is a turnkey solution which allows the small merchant to record new orders, calculate postage, receive payments, enable delivery and offer various other services. The seller can reestablish a direct relationship with the buyer and can avoid heavy commissions, platform fees & advertising expense.

With only 2.1% of the country's students deemed of “very active” physical fitness levels, seeking a digital means of improving access to wellbeing has achieved paramount importance in Indonesia. Fauzan Gani joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss his start-up DOOgether's integrated solutions for physical fitness, mental wellbeing and nutrition. Fauzan addresses how DOOgether has begun to differentiate its offering across Indonesia's Tiers 1, 2 and 3 markets. DOOfit is the company’s “Classpass-like” marketplace for 3rd party wellness and fitness studios, while DOOspace is a turnkey operator of fitness spaces for interested housing complexes, buildings and other open spaces. The two categories have take rates between 10-20%, although DOOgether sees significant additional revenue opportunity for ancillary services in its B2B business. 

Founder Irzan Raditya joins the Indo Tekno podcast to address the profound deepening in functionality that the application of artificial intelligence (AI) has enabled to his earlier SMS-based digital assistant start-up YesBoss, in its 8+ year evolution into what is today Indonesia's leading chatbot platform, Kata.ai. With more than 170 paying enterprise customers, Kata.ai overlays generative AI to enhance Indonesia's near-ubiquitous use of "chat commerce" over platforms such as WhatsApp. Irzan traces the genesis of his career as a prolific serial entrepreneur to the age of eight, when he made a good business out of drawing caricatures for his classmates. Irzan also offers insightful suggestions around safeguards to any potential abuse of AI in the future.

Indonesia is the fastest growing insurance market in the world. Giacomo Ficari joins us to discuss how his start-up LifePal seeks to remove many of the frictions and the inefficiencies associated with the traditional agent-driven approach, to apply more of a direct-to-consumer model for Indo customers. A member of the Lazada "diaspora", Giacomo discusses his journey from banking in London to various entrepreneurial roles in Southeast Asia, striking a complementarity with his three fellow cofounders at LifePal, and how the company is now reimagining the insurance journey around massive verticals such as automobiles.