Tag: indonesia

Indonesia looks to launch a thousand startups

Not having government financial support could be the strength of the country’s 1000 Startups Movement

Can Indonesia create a startup tech culture? The 1,000 startups movement aims to try.

The movement looks to encourage tech startups across the island nation with workshops, incubators and hackathons.

Notably, the program isn’t being supported by the Indonesian government with any money, just an expression of support.

That in itself may not be a bad thing, a program run to meet the needs of communities and industry is much more likely to succeed than one being supported by bureaucrats meeting KPIs or political objectives.

A question though is how appropriate Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorn’ model for tech startups is for a developing nation like Indonesia. While the nation has a high level of mobile phone penetration and a young population, it doesn’t have the sophisticated investment community or financial markets that underpin the Bay Area’s or those of other technology hubs.

Indonesia, like most developing nations, needs to find its own model which may turn out to be very different to today’s Silicon Valley when it reaches maturity later this century.

That the 1,000 Startups Movement isn’t part of a government department gives it a chance to develop a unique Indonesian identity rather than trying to recreate an officially mandated copy of Silicon Valley. It will be fascinating to watch.

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Is Australia missing the Indonesian opportunity?

Mary Meeker’s state of the internet report emphasises the opportunities in South East Asian markets.

Mary Meeker’s annual State of the Internet Report looks at the trends driving the online economy. One area that should be of concern is that Australian entrepreneurs are overlooking one of the world’s biggest growth markets that is sitting right on the nation’s doorstep.

Early in Mary’s overview, on slides 5 and 7, she shows the growth of various markets. Indonesia is the second biggest growth market for internet users – 58% year on year to 55 million – and eighth in the world for smartphone growth with a 36% increase last year taking total users to 27 million.

Given the penetration of both smartphones and the internet are low with only one quarter of Indonesians connected to the internet and less than one mobile phone in ten currently being a smartphone, there is massive potential for the savvy entrepreneur.

While there’s a steady stream of stream of Australian app developers and entrepreneurs heading to Silicon Valley, London and a few to Singapore there’s very few looking to their biggest neighbour.

This ignoring of Indonesia is one of the many omissions in the Australia in the Asian Century report; despite being one of Australia’s closest neighbours with the world’s fourth largest population and an economy growing at over 6% per year, both businesses and governments tend to overlook the nation.

For Australia, the tragedy is that Indonesia has a lot offer businesses that do more than just dig up coal and iron ore.

Perhaps now the mining boom is over, entrepreneurs and governments might start to take markets like Indonesia, and other South East Asian countries more seriously. It’s an omission that’s currently costing the country dearly.

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