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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.

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. 

"I'm still bullish Indonesia" declares returning podcast guest David Halpert, Founder of Prince Street Capital. A buyer of Amazon at around $8 when it pulled back in the 2000 crisis, David views Indonesia's private and publicly listed technology leaders as built-to-last, and sees longer term buying opportunities emerging amidst the ongoing correction. David is encouraged by recent messaging from the likes of Uber's CEO, demanding a "seismic shift" in thinking toward profitability. He in this vein hopes to see within Indonesia a cessation in hyper-competition amongst players such as GoTo, Grab, Bukalapak and Sea Limited. David also agrees with Y Combinator's recent advice to early stage tech companies to cut their expenses and focus on extending their runways. "Don't talk about TAM", he urges Indo founders. "Don't talk about GMV. Don't even talk about revenue...try talking about profit".

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.

In our first episode of Season 3, leading Southeast tech reporter for Reuters, Fanny Potkin, shares with us a number of fascinating anecdotes from her career covering the tech scene in Indonesia, from interviews of social media "buzzers" who leverage technology to influence election outcomes, to local entrepreneurs' humorous comparisons of Alibaba to a "nagging mother" and Tencent to a "passive father". Fanny's biggest prediction for 2022 is that significant new regulation is on the horizon for Indonesia's tech ecosystem. 

Alex Rusli is Cofounder of Digiasia Bios. The company offers the broadest portfolio of fintech licenses and solutions across Indonesia's start-up scene. Alex is amongst a small minority of start-up founders with previous big tech leadership experience, having served as CEO of telco giant Indosat before going "full-on founder". Our conversation ranges widely, from the challenges of fintech adoption to the benefits of martial arts amidst the demands of start-up life.(Podcast Website)

The three lead authors of the annual e-Conomy SEA report join 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 offers fascinating insights around Indonesia's more aggressive embrace of payments compared to the region, and much higher internet participation from non-metro areas. Rohit Sipahimalani from Temasek delves into drivers behind near all-time high fundraising levels in the region while offering a deeper dive into healthtech, edtech and online investment management segments. Florian Hoppe of Bain discusses factors underpinning the report's significant increases in 2025 forecasts for e-commerce, while discussing candidly what might jeopardize the region's strong growth.(Transkrip Bahasa Indonesia | Podcast Website)

Indonesia, an ecommerce market with an estimated 14 million online merchants, will likely grow to about USD80-90b in GMV by 2025. Opportunities thus abound for expert teams to acquire and partner with smaller merchants, in order to drive greater and greater operational efficiencies. Jeff Yuwono, Founder & CEO of "brand aggregator" Open Labs, discusses this massive roll-up opportunity, and how it differs in Indonesia from similar models around the globe.

Asian Development Bank research suggests that half of Indonesia's workforce of 135m is "underqualified for their jobs". Rohan Monga, CEO of leading online education platform Zenius, sees this skills crisis as being rooted in the K12 education system of 45m students. Zenius is helping drive the transformation of Indonesian pedagogy from rote knowledge-based instruction to a focus on greater critical thinking and scientific knowledge.

In this episode, we discuss startup "cross pollination" between local entrepreneurs and their sea turtle (or "pulkam") cofounders returning to Indo from overseas work or study. "Indonesia Only" VC firm Intudo Ventures uniquely operates with founding general partners Eddy Chan and Patrick Yip sitting on opposite sides of the earth; one in Silicon Valley and the other in Indonesia. The goal is to encourage in each investee company an amalgam of top-flight overseas-inspired start-up experience, with critical on-the-ground connectivity and expertise.(Podcast Website)