Indo Tekno Podcast

According to a report by Charities Aid Foundation, Indonesia is considered the world's most generous nations. Kitabisa Co-founder and CEO Vikra Ijas attributes Indonesia's global leadership in giving over the past six years to "religious and cultural influences" that have shaped "a very collectivist society." Kitabisa is Indonesia's largest online crowdfunding platform for social and personal medical causes. The company last year acquired a life insurance company, largely as an extension to its Saling Jaga offering (trans. "protecting each other), which is a mutual aid program where members can protect each from critical illness. Vikraan, an Endeavor Entrepreneur,  explains the diversification as a move beyond crowd-funding, which is "limited to a more reactive or responsive type of aid," to becoming "more strategic and prepared for future risks, which is facilitated license-wise through insurance." Kitabisa currently facilitates roughly one donation every second, and is moreover now emerging into one of the country's fastest-growing digital life insurance platforms. Vikra also reflects on the persistent guidance and support that Kitabisa's board members have offered the company, particularly e-commerce platform Bukalapak co-founders Achmad Zaky and Fajrin Rasyid.

Dayu Dara Permata, a 2022 Endeavor Entrepreneur, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the "three barriers to home ownership" that her start-up Pinhome is focused on eliminating. "There's just huge information asymmetry in the market," she observes. Dara moreover estimates that 70-80% of homebuyers require financing to transact, and most have few means to secure it properly.  The third challenge relates to the sheer complexity and cost of any transaction, particularly in its final stages. The company has sought to digitize as much of this historically fraught process as possible through a marketplace architecture. Ensuring "seamless onboarding and making the journey of uploading, publishing listings, etc. frictionless" has been key. A five-year veteran of Gojek having led its Lifestyle & Commerce Product Group, Dara discusses how that role helped inspire Pinhome's novel "Home Services" offering which, among other things has driven down the platform's CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) while maximizing LTV (Customer Lifetime Value).

Indonesia represents some 30% of global seaweed production, a market with the opportunity to grow to $26.15 B by 2028. Dodon Yamin, Cofounder and CEO of BANYU, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the company's end-to-end farm technology platform for Indonesia's seaweed farmers. BANYU's value proposition sits upon three pillars: 1) enhanced seedling availability for Indonesia's farmers, 2) the application of blockchain-based smart contracts in order to improve commercially an otherwise inefficient and "leaky" industry supply chain, and 3) the use of IOT-based (Internet of Things) equipment and software to generate data that can be aggregated, stored and analysed for better farming results. Impressed by the success of fellow ITB alumnus Gibran Huzaifah at eFishery (podcasts Season 1 Episode 14 and Season 5 Episode 5), Dodon acknowledges the need for broader investor understanding of Indonesia's rising "aquatech" movement. BANYU has set an ambitious goal of 10x growth both this year and next, seeking to position itself as a key player in unlocking the country's seaweed opportunity.

Our latest Indo Tekno podcast guest, TJ Tham, comes from the relatively unorthodox background of a formally trained musician. TJ feels he is able to apply the more "right-brained" traditions of a musical upbringing across a number of facets in his role as co-founder of tjufoo, one of Indonesia's most successful "brand aggregators". Success in both roles depends upon a number of similar skills in TJ's mind. For instance, "music involves a lot of patterns." Similarly, identifying successful small Indonesian merchants requires a "keen eye for pattern recognition." A brand aggregator team like tjufoo commonly invests in or acquires small merchants, and then applies specific expertise to multiply the merchant's growth. tjufoo's favorite sectors are currently consumer electronics, home & living and FMCG (consumables). Although some of tjufoo's global brand aggregator peers have gone bankrupt of recent, the company's leadership team feels it has struck a more sustainable business model, not by solving a succession of discrete problems, but by introducing the "processes (and) the frameworks to help small merchants grow sustainably in the long term." 

James Prananto joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the origins of his collaboration with fellow Kopi Kenangan cofounder Edward Tirtanata. "We wanted to prove that our model works...but the malls and landlords only wanted to deal with the big brands" in the early days. The pair's eventual success in raising high quality VC money helped solve this and other problems, raising Kopi Kenangan's profile and legitimacy. James and associates Fandy Cendrajaya and Christian Sutardi more recently founded Kopital Ventures to leverage their expertise and networks of contacts for the latest generation of Indonesian entrepreneurs. "It also allows me to give back to the community by growing the Indonesian startup ecosystem."  The most defining value-add that Kopital offers its investee founders is "the amount of time that we spend with the founders." While James has found the latest crop of Indonesian entrepreneurs much more daring than their predecessors, he urges the country's younger founders to "dream bigger".

Indo Tekno guest Adi Nugroho's technological experimentation with mushrooms began nearly 15 years ago. His first major breakthroughs in exploiting "mycelium" as a sustainable alternative came in the construction industry, where it proved itself to be lightweight, less pollutive, fire-resistant and have good insulation properties. Adi's current venture, MYCL, has gained impressive traction in major industries such as automobiles, fashion and furniture, all of which seek natural and sustainable alternatives to the highly pollutive animal leather fabrication process. In harvesting a targeted 250,000 sq ft of mushrooms next year, MYCL can displace leather production which would otherwise create 430 tons of CO2 emissions, result in the slaughter of 7,000 cows and turn up to 1. 5 million liters of fresh water into tanning effluent.

The global e-book market totalled USD24 billion last year. KaryaKarsa founder Ario Tamat discusses the company's path to creating a viable self-serve online publishing platform, one of the first to enable significant monetization opportunities for Indonesia's writers, and creators of other sorts of media; from audio to video to comics to photographs. A talented musician himself, Ario and cofounders Pribadi Prananta and the late Aria Rajasa asked: "Why not create a platform where fans could give money directly to their favorite creators in return for them continuing to create their favorite work?" The business indeed seems to have found successful product-market fit selling weekly serialized stories. "We have 240,000 creators. Some 50% of them are writers and our current user base is 1.8 million registered users". An EBITDA-positive business, the company intends to add further categories and functionality to perpetuate its nearly 2X growth year-on-year.

Gibran Huzaifah returns for the first time since his last appearance on the Indo Tekno podcast three and a half years ago to offer updates on the eFishery business and answer big picture questions on topics such as personal development, leadership and the nature of entrepreneurship in Indonesia. eFishery has grown meteorically, from serving 7,000 fish farmers as of our last episode in August, 2020, to more than 200,000 farmers today. Gibran recounts organizational growing pains centered around unforeseen headcount and leadership expansion. Gibran also details the company's growing profusion of financial services (many offered through third party partners). These services are all powered by eFishery's big data-enabled credit scoring capabilities. eFishery is "the largest aquaculture technology company globally right now," he states. Gibran also walks listeners through eFishery's entry into the Indian market, and discusses his motivations to export to the competitive US market.  

"An entrepreneur must start from empathy for those people that feel the problem," shared  Wildiyanto Yawin, cofounder of SME credit analytics platform Finskor, "and by that motivation they bring  impact and help others by solving the problem. " Finskor is an AI company providing SaaS to automate and digitize the credit analytics process for Indonesia's SME's. With IDR600 trillion in credit needs that cannot be served by traditional banks, Finskor labors intensively to build enough trust to onboard these banks, many of which are intensely risk averse and are (understandably) concerned over data security. The company leverages AI to replace the error-prone manual process of reviewing hundreds of pages of an SME's financial statements, which serves to reduce fraud and create much more reliable inputs for credit scoring. Yawin views Finskor's longer term success in advancing AI to compensate for Indonesia's notoriously fractured and "noisy" financial data sources.

Indonesia's high-value users (HVU's) "spend almost 7x more than the average digital consumer in the country" states Sapna Chadha, VP for SEA and South Asia at Google. While addressing the needs of the "HVU" will remain critical, "almost twice the opportunity is with that of non-high value users," she added. "Three quarters of non-high value users say that they would engage if their barriers were addressed." Sapna and fellow guest Florian Hoppe, Partner and Head of Vector in Asia-Pacific, Bain & Company, envision innovations in areas such as logistics and new online shopping functionality unlocking much of this growth potential. Our two guests join the Indo Tekno podcast to address the newly released 8th edition of the e-Conomy SEA report, titled "Reaching new heights: navigating the path to profitable growth". Florian additionally proposes a path to a resumption in Indo tech IPO's, one in which increasingly realistic entry valuations, and improving monetisation models, unlock a record USD16b in dry powder as of YE 2022. The team expects Indonesia's digital economy growth to reaccelerate from 8% YoY this year to a 15% CAGR, reaching ~$110B by 2025.

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. 

Ryan Manafe joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss both the difficulties and long-term rewards of staying true to rural e-commerce. While many of Indonesia's "warungtech" platforms claim to focus on enabling commerce in Tiers 3 & 4, many invariably retreat to urban markets such as Jakarta and Surabaya, given higher population density, consumer tech savviness and digital connectivity. Dagangan, which Ryan cofounded 4.5 years ago, maintains a disciplined focus on Indonesia's rural markets, home to 87% of the country's population and 75% of its household spending. Seeing far less competition in these regions, Dagangan leverages a "hub-and-spoke" architecture to access a larger profit pool compared to Indonesia's hyper-competitive Tier 1 markets. Ryan devotes a significant part of our discussion to the importance of meditation and mindfulness in navigating through today's challenges such as fund-raising and shifting competitive terrain.

“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.

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.

Jakob Rost joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss Ayoconnect's aggressive evolution from an initial focus on payments aggregation toward a more elemental Open Finance platform. A company he founded in early-2016, Ayoconnect is modelled around the premise that “every company will be a fintech company”. It offers broad fullstack solutions to any financial institution or tech company seeking to enter online banking and payments services quickly and comprehensively. Jakob also shares the backstory of world-renowned hedge fund/PE Tiger Global's investment in Ayoconnect's early-2022 fund-raise, marking one of Tiger's earliest ever investment rounds in Southeast Asia. 

The three lead authors of the annual e-Conomy SEA report return to the Indo Tekno podcast to share further color on this seminal report on the state of the Southeast Asian internet economy. Stephanie Davis of Google shares deep analysis around the nature of slowing internet growth in 2022, describing the massive shift amongst the region's  tech platforms from "acquisition to deeper engagement as a business model." Wai Hoong FOCK from Temasek meanwhile reviews several mixed trends in public and private valuations, noting all the while a continued rise of interest in the region amongst investors, which is no better revealed than by the sharp growth in the number of single family investment offices based in Singapore from 400 in 2021, to 700 in 2021.  Florian Hoppe of Bain summarizes conversations with a wide swath of the firm's tech clients, noting surprise by how well Southeast Asia has held up. Compared to what his global colleagues are seeing, Florian posits that Southeast Asia "appears to be relatively far away from a real recession."

Climate Tech investment set a record half globally in 2022 1H, with $26.8B in venture funding across roughly 970 deals. However, less than 2% of start-ups in Asia are climate-oriented, while the global average is 15%. Jonathan Davy of Ecoxyztem joins the Indo Tekno Podcast to discuss the criticality of Ecoxyztem's unique turnkey venture builder model to address Indonesia's under-developed Climate Tech sector, and the broader opportunity that his incubatees have across the developing world. Jonathan also offers examples of the platform's 360-degree support of portfolio companies such waste4change,  Enertec and ReservoAir.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards within tech are rapidly evolving from a "nice-to-have" to a "need-to-have". Fellow AC Ventures colleague Lauren Blasco, who leads the fund's ESG efforts, shares findings from a first-of-its-kind report co-authored with BCG which sets the first quantifiable ESG standards for Indonesia's tech sector. Lauren views "risk mitigation, streamlining operations and identifying opportunities" as common benefits that tech start-up's cite in adopting ESG guidelines. Such actions may not be optional going forward: a growing number of VC fund LP's require ESG adherence across a fund's portfolio. Moreover, the EU is close to mandating that all large companies disclose around ESG-related issues. The US SEC meanwhile is likely to require that all listed companies, tech & non-tech alike, address ESG in their filings. 

Naga Tan, Co-Founder & CEO of ErudiFi, joins Indo Tekno to discuss solutions to Indonesia's extraordinarily depressed tertiary enrolment rates (~36%), one of the lowest in the region (eg: Thailand 60%, Singapore 90%). ErudiFi leverages alternative data to extend education financing in markets such as Indo and the Philippines (collective TAM of USD5b), in order to help increase enrolment and accelerate industry growth. Cash/informal loans often carry high interest rates while school internal instalment plans are limited. ErudiFi offers 0%-1.5% monthly interest rates, usually grants approvals within a day, and offers students a more generous tenor of 6-24 months. The platform seeks to fund over 300,000 Indonesian students by 2024.

Indonesia generates approximately 6.8 million tons of plastic waste every year, according to the Indonesia National Plastic Action Partnership (or NPAP). Shockingly, almost none of this waste has been sorted in the past. Indonesian actor and presenter Hamish Daud joins the Indo Tekno Podcast to discuss his efforts to apply data analysis and entirely new practices in order to address Indonesia's deficient waste collection and recycling practices. Octopus, a start-up he cofounded with partner Moehammad Ichsan, seeks to create an efficient reverse logistics service for Indonesia's packaging industries. The platform enables granular tracking of "Postconsumer Material" (PCM), offering valuable data services to FMCG clients such as Danone and P&G.

Vincent Iswara, CEO and Cofounder of Indonesian payments platform DANA, discusses an encouraging cooling in competition in the space amidst recent pressures in the global financial markets. He also sounded an optimistic tone around prospects for industry profitability going forward. DANA payment volumes in 1H 2022 alone surpassed the company's full-year 2021 volumes. Vince also offers a compare-and-contrast between China and Indo's payments players. DANA boasts several strategic investors on its "cap table" such as new investors Lazada Group and Sinarmas. DANA has taken an "open platform" approach as a payments provider, offering its capabilities to any major third party e-commerce or other commercial platforms requiring a payments solution. This strategy stands in contrast to "captive" payments solutions which serve largely one single individual e-commerce, ride-sharing or other large platform. 

Helga Tjahjadi, the Cofounder and and CEO of food Indonesian tech start-up making plant-based beef and chicken Green Rebel Foods, joins us to discuss how the country is optimally placed to see strong secular growth in the ongoing shift to alternative proteins. Helga discusses what it takes to build an entirely new consumer brand in 2022, one specifically embracing Indonesia and Asian roots. In addition to profiling several of Green Rebel's indigenous technological innovations such as "texturization" and "Rebel Emulsion", Helga also discusses Green Rebel's unique supply chain, expansion plans and goal to achieve price-parity with traditional proteins. 

Pensieve Founder Farina Situmorang traces her deep interest in the application of advanced technology to politics and government to her fervour in supporting Barack Obama's campaign for the White House when she was studying in the US. Widely known as one of the architects of the successful digital campaign popularly known as “The Jokowi Effect”, Farina founded Pensieve in order to harness artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to assist governments in emerging markets with digital transformation. Farina also shares views around both the good and the harm that large digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have had in political discourse, both in Indonesia and globally. 

Ans Syuhada, Cofounder and Tech Lead of SME accounting solutions platform Delegasi, walks us through a career built around software engineering, from his early days when Ans' and cofounder Okki Pratama's alma mater ITB began offering instruction in product management, to some 6.5 years running engineering and platform & data at leading aquaculture platform eFishery. A Y-Combinator Summer 2022 participant, Delegasi seeks to vastly simplify the accounting challenges of the small business owner, starting with Indonesia's restaurant segment.

Gojek Cofounder Kevin Aluwi returns to the Indo Tekno podcast in a wide ranging discussion of his personal management philosophy, work-life balance, innovation in Web3 & crypto, and investing in a successful marital partnership when both spouses maintain start-up leadership roles. Kevin specifically addresses his belief in “saying no to great ideas” and the importance of a company “proactively paying its debts”. Having recently wrapped up his role at the successfully merged GoTo, Kevin reflects on the continuing importance of weaving the subtler differences between the two companies in areas such as culture, management principles and even compensation schemes, once the post-merger "heavy lifting" has finished. 

Timothy Astandu, CEO and Co-Founder at consumer insights platform Populix, offers an entertaining retelling of the company's origin story, before detailing Populix's attempts to deliver far deeper and more detailed consumer insights compared to the inefficient and problematic offline alternatives that have heretofore prevailed in Indonesia. Measuring "brand health and consumer behavior" are the two most urgent use cases; which moreover span all conceivable industries; from education to diversified conglomerates to automotive to FMCG and beyond. Timothy also discusses how AI has both measurably improved the broader consumer insights space, and specifically allowed Populix to roll out entirely new insights and functionality in this USD80b global market.

Pandu Adi Laras joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss age-old working capital challenges amongst Indonesia's ~50,000 SME used auto dealers, and what his start-up broom.id is doing to improve liquidity in the industry through easy access to capital using inventory as collateral. Indonesia's used car market currently boasts $65B in yearly transaction value. broom.id's digitized solution offers quick approvals for short term working capital, addressing the industry's near-complete absence of data and lack of access to the incumbent banking industry. 

Prateek Chaturvedi, Founder and CEO of KitaBeli, joins the Indo Tekno podcast to deliver an extremely comprehensible tutorial on social commerce in Indonesia, both in terms of its similarities with neighbors China and India, and how it is evolving in turn quite separately from other markets. KitaBeli has eschewed Tier 1 markets such as Jakarta, instead choosing to fashion its offering around the unique needs of Indonesia's Tier 2 and 3 markets, where the platform successfully addresses both significantly lower levels of familiarity with e-commerce, unique consumer demands and lower levels of trust than their urban counterparts.

PT Ruma's founding in 2009 marks one of Indonesia's first and most sustained initiatives to digitize the country's unbanked and underserved. Its Mapan platform offers fintech services through Indonesia's unique decades-old arisan, enabling local groups of women to come together and empower each other financially. Mapan CEO Ardelia Apti joins the Indo Tekno podcast to detail the specific workings of Mapan in spreading financial literacy, encouraging healthier fiscal behaviors with the woman of the household, and improving her access to affordable products and services.

Revenue-based Finance (RBF) is a form of financing which already has an established track record in the West, but is only now enjoying broader adoption in markets such as Indonesia. Choco Up is a first mover in the category in Asia, targeting ASEAN's USD300b business funding gap. Choco Up cofounders Percy Hung and Brian Tsang explain that RBF does not require any of the dilution of equity raising, or the complications of traditional bank borrowing, and thus has become an increasingly popular means of raising funds quickly. Such an arrangement, requiring API access to the entrepreneur's business, is useful in the age of mega-sales events such as Singles Day and 12-12), when sellers need significant capital quickly in order to build inventory, etc.  RBF generally entails an agreement that the merchant or tech founder covers a one-time fee, and subsequently pays back (daily, weekly, monthly, per transaction, etc) through a revenue share. 

A 7.5 year veteran of the Alibaba ecosystem, Desty Cofounder & CEO Mulyono Xu lays out many of the challenges that Indonesian online merchants face trying to operate across countless incompatible systems. Desty seeks to collapse the host of largely unconnected e-commerce marketplaces, payment systems and logistics providers into one dashboard in order to minimize complexity for Indonesia's online sellers. Mulyono shares fascinating insights across topics ranging from his early days building a career in Asia's heart of eCommerce - Hangzhou; to the singular importance of striking product-market fit early on at a start-up.

Technology-based coffee chain Fore Coffee needs to "build trust" continuously with Indonesian consumers, according to CEO Vico Lomar. "Whoever builds that consistency for the people of Indonesia and Southeast Asia" will dominate the otherwise competitive landscape for coffee drinkers. A veteran of the F&B industry since the early-2000's, Vico describes the turn-around that he and the leadership team at Fore have been orchestrating since his arrival two years ago. The world's 40th heaviest consumer of caffeinated beverages, Vico expects the Indonesian coffee drinker to enter the top 15 or 20 over the next several years, thus driving robust consumption growth in the sector over the longer term.

Reynold Wijaya, Cofounder of regional SME lending leader Funding Societies (Modalku in Indonesia), joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss the importance of the 7+ years that the company has spent constantly refining its lending services as part of its game plan to enter into neobanking services for Indonesian and Southeast Asian enterprise. An apparent "spoke" to the broader neobanking "hub", Reynold argues that lending is the far-and-away the most challenging of SME-oriented services to master, and will be key to FS-Modalku's emergence as a leading SME digital financing platform in the region, given that few other claimants to the neobanking crown have expertise in lending. COVID brought exceptional pressures to the financing landscape, leading Modalku to recalibrate its credit policy quickly, and recall loans from enterprise clients who were predicted at significant risk of default. This pruning in borrower profiles has led to material improvements in the quality of its portfolio today.

Hiro Kiga joins the Indo Tekno podcast to discuss life as a Japanese transplant to Indonesia. He also reflects on the success of fellow JIS high school classmates who have also come to play major roles in the country's tech ecosystem. Much of the episode he devotes to recounting his fateful leap from VC to founder. Hiro earlier in his career worked at the VC arm of Japanese gaming and social media heavyweight GREE. Six and a half years ago he founded Wallex, a leading cross-border banking player. Hiro discusses Wallex's successful merger with Singapore-based M-DAQ, and also addresses the importance of a proactive strategy with the regulator in winning and, just as importantly, maintaining financial services licenses.

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.