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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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....

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...

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,...

“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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....