Indo Tekno Podcast

In the wake of the Indonesian government's announcement several days back that it would allocate 7 trillion rupiah (or $455.88 million) to subsidise electric motorcycle sales through 2024, we welcome onto the Indo Tekno Podcast James Chan, founder of ION Mobility, a company dedicated to "affordable, desirable, and sustainable mobility for everyone." The current share of "EV two wheelers" in new motorcycle sales in Indonesia remains below 1%. James believes that EV penetration of new sales could climb to north of 30% within five years, behind the ever-improving price and performance attributes of EV motorbikes such as ION's M1-S model, government incentives mentioned above, and clear shifts in consumer preferences. An accomplished entrepreneur and investor, James reflects candidly on the most formidable challenges that he has faced in growing ION through the COVID period to its leadership in EV motorbikes.

The global B2B (business-to-business) eCommerce market was valued at US$17.9 trillion in 2021. That is over 5 times that of the consumer-oriented B2C market. Wynn Nathaniel joins the Indo Tekno podcast to describe what his start-up, Proglix, is doing to digitize and streamline Indonesia's massive trade in raw materials such as steel and industrial goods such as electrical supplies. Joining us from his temporary base in the San Francisco Bay Area, Wynn and the Proglix team are in the Jan-Apr 2023 Y Combinator cohort, which he describes as a fantastic networking knowledge-building opportunity.  Wynn also outlines ambitious 2024 growth goals, which the Proglix team is confident in meeting as it expands and simplifies raw materials procurement to Indonesia's smaller and medium-size enterprise.

At a time when the overall funding outlook for start-up's in Indonesia has grown increasingly inclement, Camille Krejci joins the Indo Tekno Podcast to outline the novel ways in which his new fund, 21yield, extends loan agreements to fintechs in emerging markets more flexibly to help them grow their loan portfolio. Fintech remains the most crowded category in Indonesia, while the proper tools  to raise funds and lend onward for these start-up's remain scarce and ill-suited. Camille views the biggest deficiencies in debt lending to fintechs being most funds' inability to lend in the early stages, their long turnaround times, and generally pretty exacting requirements around runway. 21yield seeks to address these pain points through an approach more uniquely suited to these online lending businesses, supported by the application of deeper leveraging of data.  

Indonesia boasts 25m neighborhood businesses, which represent an estimated 40% (US$450b) of the country's GDP. As part of our inaugural episode of 2023, Marshall Silver joins the Indo Tekno podcast to describe how his start-up DekatKita (meaning "near us" in Indonesian) is addressing growing discontent amongst local mom & pop stores, predominately in the food & beverage segment, with the high fees (20-30%) and disappearing subsidies of incumbent platforms such as Grab & GoTo. DekatKita has built an online storefront used by over 5,000 neighborhood merchants to promote and operate their businesses. After seeing some businesses boost sales exponentially using DekatKita Store, the company is now launching a marketplace for shoppers, to find and order from the neighborhood merchants offering the best product and customer experience—the “hidden gems” around them. An advocate of the tireless pursuit of product-market fit, Marshall describes how refinement of DekatKita functionality has helped them persuade over 20% of pilot merchants to upgrade from a free Store to a paid service.

Martyn Terpilowski joins us for the final Indo Tekno episode of 2022. The Founder of Bhumi Varta Technology, Martyn discusses the challenges of building a leading start-up in the deep tech space in Indonesia, and sees wins with major accounts such as Astro as testament to BVT's strengths in digital mapping and other "less sexy" enterprise-oriented technologies. Martyn takes exception with what he perceives as having been a prevailing culture of "back-slapping" within the tech and VC world in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. This very insular world, as he sees it, has failed to question an unhealthy fixation on "growth-at-all-costs" amongst even the highest profile of start-ups. In today's more treacherous global macro environment, Martyn is concerned that we could see an implosion across Southeast Asia's tech world on par with the "dotcom bust" at the turn of the millennium. 

Raymond Au, the Chief Data Officer of TipTip, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to describe how big data has proved critical in opening up new venues of monetization for the creator economy, which earns over $104 billion dollars globally. TipTip is a recently funded monetization platform for content creators across Southeast Asia. Working with those generating content on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, posting on e-commerce platforms, and publishing work through e-books and other channels; TipTip represents a new breed of big data champions in Indonesia. It offers detailed analysis to generate additional income for content creators, "combining tactics and techniques...to build a brand" for aspiring influencers. Given the challenging macro environment, Raymond predicts that in 2023 "personal development will be the number one market for creators," likely followed by health and entertainment.

Kristie Neo, the Editor for Venture Capital coverage at DealStreetAsia, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to reflect on the highs-and-lows of an already storied career covering the tech sector in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She describes as one of her proudest moments her widely profiled investigative exposé in which Kristie challenged a number of questionable assertions made by self-proclaimed unicorn, Filipino property developer Revolution Precrafted. Kristie laments the often contentious relationship between the media and the tech world. She for instance reflects on the turbulence generated from her recent coverage of the potential "down-round" of a Singapore-based software company, which led to a series of testy exchanges over social media. Kristie is excited with the emergence of the carbon credit market in Indo. Although she is worried that Indonesia's 2024 elections could jeopardize the country's strong support of the tech sector, she adds "I think the Indonesian ecosystem can only grow much bigger and better."

Mikko Perez and Adrian Lorenzo of Ayannah tell the story of the company's journey as a non-Indo start up setting up in Indonesia during the pandemic, and its strong growth trajectory in spite of the lockdowns and the current economic slowdown. Ayannah’s digital “Lending as a Service” platform processes close to USD2m (IDR 30 billion) a month in loans while maintaining a 100% collection rate by partnering with cooperatives serving blue collar workers and MSME (warung/toko) entrepreneurs. They also describe a “three layer wedding cake” business model that is enabling financial institutions and consumer brands to reach millions of underserved MSME entrepreneurs in Indonesia and the Philippines at scale via digital and hyperlocal channels. 

Rama Suparta and Andrew Kandolha, cofounders of SATURDAYS, discuss Indonesia's leading Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) lifestyle eyewear brand. SATURDAYS has created its own streamlined supply chain in order to remove the massive middleman costs that the traditional industry is built upon. The company has pursued an "omnichannel strategy", with offline stores (famous also for their baristas), a website, mobile app and home try-on service, all fully integrated around the customer. The duo also addresses the success they have achieved in weaving social media influencers into SATURDAYS' marketing strategy. Enhancing further "all aspects of human resources and improving store productivity" are the company's current goals going into 2023. 

Air conditioning (AC) emissions cause 13% of climate change globally. Indonesia, given its combination of strong economic growth and hot climate, is a massive emitter of freon and other global warming gases. Louis Potok, Founder of Recoolit, has built a technology-driven platform to enable the sale of high-quality carbon credits from refrigerant destruction. The solution engages with AC techs on the front lines and pays them to recover gas before they would otherwise scrap old units and vent the gas straight into the air. Recoolit has developed software to coordinate logistics to destroy the gas to international standards. The platform then sells voluntary carbon credits to global buyers. "We'd like to be about 10 x what we did in 2022" in 2023, on a longer term journey to prevent 1 billion tons CO2e by 2030.