ASTRO belongs to one of the fastest growing subsegments of online shopping: eGroceries. Since its founding 9 months ago, the company has built out 50 "hubs" (dark stores), and has grown 10x since early-2022 alone, on nearly 1 million downloads. Company Co-Founder & CEO Vincent Tjendra discusses an Indonesian e-grocery penetration target of 3-4% within 5 years, from 0.5% currently. He also addresses the hazards of over-investment, the path to profitability, the role of promotions, and common misperceptions around competition.

Some 9 in 10 workers experience burnout in Southeast Asia according to Justin Kim, the Cofounder and CEO of mental wellness coaching solution Ami. Jakarta moreover is a top 5 city in terms of burnout, a market in which Ami's SaaS-based subscription platform is growing rapidly.  Having introduced a personalized online coaching service primarily aimed at Indonesia's tech industry, Ami is at the forefront of confronting taboos around burnout and stress in the workplace. The pandemic has added momentum to Ami's growth, given the loneliness and various other stressors that many employees now experience. Justin also discusses Ami's impressively global list of investors. The company is in fact the very first early stage Asia investment of Facebook parent company Meta. 

Indonesian domestic helpers working for employers overseas represent the single largest group of female salaried workers contributing to Indonesian households. A native of Ukraine, Dayana Yermolayeva is CEO and Cofounder of JiPay. She has created a growing family of services aimed at the 70m domestic workers across the globe who do not have access to financial services. Some 50% are entirely unbanked and 60% are chronically in debt. The Indonesian helper tends to send more than half her income back home, and rarely is able to save. JiPay currently offers a card for helpers to purchase groceries on behalf of their employers helping to build trust in households where helpers work. These helpers can also be paid their salary into a JiPay account, save and remit via the app, thus allowing helpers to manage all basic needs in one place.

Interested in supporting the Ukrainian cause? Consider donating to Dayana's favorite charity:

https://www.instagram.com/kiddo.ua/

Reinier Musters joins us to review the latest breakthroughs in online SME lending in Indonesia, including critical improvements in credit scoring. Nikel, a company that Reinier founded in early 2019, has championed “embedded lending”, a turnkey solution which promises to empower a wide variety of platforms with a newfound ability to lend to Indonesian SME’s. Citing a fascinating collaboration with leading hotel platform RedDoorz allowing hotel partners to refurbish their properties through revenue-based lending, Reinier also sees e-commerce sites and other marketplaces as offering important use cases of the Nikel solution.

In our first episode devoted to the corporate venture capital or CVC segment in Indonesia, the CEO of Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi (TMI), Marlin Siahaan, shares a number of examples of value-add that parentco Telkomsel has created in collaborating with TMI portfolio companies such as Finaccel, Halodoc, Evermos and Sekolah.mu. Marlin details TMI's key investment criteria, and also delves into emerging areas such as agritech, blockchain, and ESG. TMI additionally looks for infrastructure plays including IOT and 5G-focused start-ups that can connect with Telkomsel telco assets. Marlin concludes by offering key learnings and leadership advice for other women seeking to create impact within the tech world.

William Li shares with us the genesis of one of Indonesia's largest players in the fintech and e-commerce space, Akulaku. The business originated in early-2014 as HK-based cross-border remittances platform Silvrr E-Commerce. Having borne witness to the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again of China's P2P and broader fintech space, William has combined those learnings, with a keen understanding of legal & regulatory issues, to grow Akulaku's basic consumer financial services toward a full digibank, with a 5-year goal to serve 50m people in 10 countries. 

Rifki Pratomo, the Cofounder and CEO of Andalin, joins us this week to discuss the massive inefficiencies that continue to plague the region's multi-trillion dollar cross-border trade. Andalin is a "digital freight forwarder" that is devoted to removing frictions in cross-border B2B commerce. Traditional freight forwarders for instance take on average  101 hours to provide a simple manual spot quote to a customer. Andalin's mandate to digitize and streamline cross-border trade has become even more mission-critical due to the profound dislocations that the COVID pandemic has brought about to global supply chains.

Fresh Factory is one of a growing number of Indonesian start-ups to have gained entrance into the highly coveted Y-Combinator program. Fresh from having completed YC's demo day, company Cofounder and CFO Andre Septiano reflects on his key learnings from the program, which included how to achieve product-market fit, and dealing with failure.  Andre also addresses the massive opportunity that Fresh Factory's "hyperlocal" approach to supporting cold chain logistics hopes to capture, an opportunity whose growth has accelerated on the tailwinds of the COVID pandemic.

Wafa Taftazani speaks of his path to founding no less than three start-ups within a three year period. Modal Rakyat extends working capital for startups and SMEs, while VCGamers is a gaming & NFT marketplace, and UpBanx is a fintech & marketplace for brands and creators in Indonesia. The three independent companies come together regularly, whether its Modal Rakyat assisting UpBanx customers in securing invoice financing, or VCGamers helping UpBanx brands and influencers launch Web3 digital assets. Consider listening through to the end of our podcast, when Wafa discusses how daily meditation of life's bigger questions has profoundly impacted his entrepreneurial journey.