Borderless News Online recently caught up with Shinta Witoyo Dhanuwardoyo, managing partner of Nusantara Ventures and one of Indonesia’s best known tech entrepreneurs. In this latest clip of a multi-part interview, she said while the interest is there, some of the larger Silicon Valley venture capitalists are “less daring to come to Southeast Asia.”
“I think that more and more people based in Silicon Valley are interested to enter the Southeast Asian market, especially Indonesia, because we’re the biggest market,” she told Borderless News Online in her office in Jakarta.
“However, the investment side, I think it’s more tricky on that part…I know a number of smaller venture capitals who are already investing in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia. But I think the big names of venture capitals are less daring to come to Southeast Asia,” said Dhanuwardoyo, founder of one of Indonesia’s first Internet companies, Bubu.com.
“But I think that’s very understandable. I mean, this is a new market. But we see a very great potential. Asia is definitely the next place to invest, especially in Southeast Asia,” she said.
Indeed, Southeast Asia’s digital economy is set to boom, and some estimates predict the online retail market will be worth $130 billion by 2020.
Moreover, more Tweets go out from Jakarta than any other city in the world, and the nation is Facebook’s no. 4 customer worldwide. Young people are crazy about social media, and make up a large chunk of the nation’s 250 million-strong population.
When asked what she thinks the specific fears of the Silicon Valley’s larger venture capital firms is in investing in Indonesia, she said the tech startup scene is only four or five years old.
“It’s very new. And when it’s new, a lot of people tend to be more careful about it. I think there’s nothing wrong about that. This is the investment world,” she said.
She noted that a number of companies in Southeast Asia are already doubling or tripling their value. As an example of successful Indonesian startups, she pointed out Go-Jek and Tokopedia. The latter – one of the nation’s leading ecommerce platforms, in 2014 grabbed headlines worldwide after it received around $100 million from giants SoftBank Corp. and Sequoia Capital. Analysts and observers said this may well foreshadow more opportunities down the road for investors.
Dhanuwardoyo added that she’d like to see more companies like Go-Jek, which fulfill a social and economic need in the country, which has a vast rich-poor divide. Go-Jek is an app that allows motorcycle taxis to avoid waiting around for customers for hours and allows passengers to book rides online. The app reduces wait times on both ends and allows drivers to earn more money in an occupation that often employs lower-income individuals.
“They’re touching base with the grass roots, and I believe that’s the next thing: how can we take grass roots (tech startups) to the next level. I want to see more of those type of tech startups here in the country,” she said.
She added that another app, Groceria, helps make grocery shopping easier and more convenient, and in the end actually creates more shoppers and more jobs, all of which helps the grass roots economy grow.
Going forward, second tier cities in the country, other than the massive Jakarta, will be using more apps that help people in their busy day-to-day lives.
Still, one of the main problems the country’s Internet economy is seeing is online fraud. Many would-be customers are wary of giving out their credit card information online, and data security has a long way to go in order to get it up to speed, experts said.
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