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 …

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…

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 seed…

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 …

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 thi…

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 vent…

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 photograph…

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 f…

"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…

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 s…

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…

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 incre…

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 tec…

“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…

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 …

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…

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 F…

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. Fau…

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 enter…

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 dis…

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 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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 gen…

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 que…

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 loa…

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 st…

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 de…

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 fin…

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 digital economy. Stephanie Davis of Google shares deep analysis around the nature of slowing digital adoption growth in 2022, describing the massive shift amongst the region's te…

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 mod…

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 sect…

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 USD5…

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 entirel…

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…

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 specif…

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”, Fa…

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 …

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…

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. Measuri…

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 transacti…

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, ins…

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 In…

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 …

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 or…

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 descr…

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 app…

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…