Indonesia’s grassroots startup movement
Indonesia is not known to be a haven for small to medium enterprises. The laws and investment opportunities aren’t widely supportive of individuals with ideas looking to get off the ground. However, a rapidly growing movement is afoot in the country’s startup scene and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by foreign investors.
A small group of ragtag innovators are fighting their way out of obscurity, and they’re taking everyone else in Indonesia’s burgeoning startup scene with them.
We talked at length with Natali Ardianto, one of the founders of a new monthly event called #StartupLokal, about his plan, why he started this initiative, and what he thinks of the Indonesian startup scene.
Natali, a programmer for 16 years, was the chief technology office and one of the founders of Urbanesia, a hot Jakarta city directory site that has taken funding from East Ventures. He left recently to join Warato Indonesia to build Golfnesia, another startup whose purpose and field he still is reluctant to disclose.
On founding #startuplokal
We have more than 200 startups here in Indonesia, with an average five to 10 new startups every month. The problem is, they have no clue on how to expose themselves to media and the world.
That’s why we initiated the #StartupLokal community, because startups is all about the people, and they need to hone their soft skills so that they can leverage their startups, attract investors and become the next billionaire in 5-10 years time.
The hash sign in #StartupLokal came from the Twitter hash-tags, which is how our community started to develop in the first place.
The people behind #startuplokal
Our current initiators are me, Nuniek Tirta from bundagaul.com, Sanny Gaddafi from autosally.com and Aulia ‘Ollie’ from Kutukutubuku.com. We have our own startups and we wanted to gain more knowledge in the business, financial and communication side, but we want all Indonesia startups to gain benefit in these too. We understand that without a solid community, we would only be just a blip in the radar.
What #StartupLokal is about
Our objective is to leverage Indonesia startups into becoming a strong and widely known startups, not just in the industry, but to the public. We wanted #startupLokal to become a melting pot between startups and also with investors to connect and collaborate.
What can startups gain from joining #StartupLokal?
The #StartupLokal meetup itself will have a pitching session and panelists every month with different topics ranging from marketing, communication, financial, legal, the market and industry such as mobile, gaming, apps industry, and also knowledge in soft skills.
We don’t focus on the technology because we believe there are already relevant communities for that. The best part is that we tried to keep this monthly event free of charge, and open for all without any membership or registration. The target audience are startup owners, investors, developers, media and anybody with interests in startups.
Setting up the Indonesia Startup Foundation
We are also in the process of creating the Indonesia Startup Foundation. Basically this foundation will be the gateway between investors and startups, since nowadays in Indonesia, there isn’t any single entity that helps connect those two. We also have plans to create some kind of hacker space for startups around the cities in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.
We are planning to have our own professionals in accounting, legal, marketing, strategist, publicist and even project managers so that new startups can focus on developing their product rather than thinking about tax and stuff, to keep their company lean and to be able to endure longer with limited funds. Basically creating our own version of lean startups.
An Indonesian tech bubble?
Indonesia startups are gaining a lot of momentum. An awarding event, an incubator program, a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) program for startups and a whole lot more are there specifically for startups. Even online and offline media in Indonesia are starting to have their own columns about startups. All this looks very similar to the 1998 dotcom bubble.
We are trying to keep the momentum steady by having #startupLokal meetup, #startupLokal Echo which is a small group discussion, and #startupLokal Storm, a joint co-operation event with sponsors, every month. We don’t want this to become just another hype or bubble that is waiting to pop and disappear, that’s why we are thinking and working hard on how to keep the momentum up.
What’s the situation with local startups, why and how is it growing?
With local telcos starting to shift from voice to data, and internet in Indonesia is getting cheaper and faster, this has created a huge opportunity for startups to grow exponentially. The good thing is that startups don’t have to educate these people on how to go online, because Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry devices already do the job for us.
As mentioned before, we have hundreds of startups with five to 10 new startups every month. We even have four Groupon clones in just one month, and a few other is coming. And these clones are really serious with their business, with investment coming from foreign and local investors. We had startups made in just two months, or even less than one month.
There are a lot of highly skilled developers out there in Indonesia, and now they are trying to tell the world that they exist. And with rapid exposure either by the online and offline media, more and more new startups are created and mostly funded by bootstrapping or as a side-project of an existing company.
What do you know about the views of foreign investors on Indonesian startups?
One of the foreign investors asked me this: “Is Indonesia startups ready to create new ideas, or currently is still in a state of creating clones from other successful foreign websites?” I have my own personal view, but the bottom line is that Indonesian startups are still in its infant state, which needs nurturing from experienced investors and success stories around the globe. With those, these Indonesian startups might have a fighting chance of challenging the giants and go global.
Is there a tendency to develop localised services and apps as opposed to something more universal?
Yes, most Indonesian startups believe that we might have a fighting chance against those global players if we focus on local market first. After all, we understand our own local market like the back of our hand, right? But that’s not the case with how investors think.
Some of the investors are looking for #local startups that have plans to go global and world-wide. When I asked them why do they look for that kind of startups in Indonesia, they answered this: “If you go global and your startups didn’t work too well, then at least you have grabbed some of the regional market or your own country’s market. But if you just target your own country and your startups didn’t work too well, then you have nothing.”
We local startups must contemplate on this way of thinking, and start to widen our horizon and perspective. Of course some of you might disagree, but investors do look for profit, not just blindly invest and think you are still doing well if your cashflow is bleeding for years.
What do Indonesian startups need to gain traction and exposure?
Word of mouth (or viral) is a nice strategy, but startups need to realise that to gain an exponential exposures, they need to be friends with the media. A lot of startups don’t even know how to create a press release or what boilerplate means. This is what the #startupLokal community tries to fill.
We also encourage founders to brand themselves to increase their startups traction, because startups will always be associated with the founders. When we mention names such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Linus Torvald, it will always be associated with their companies. When Steve Jobs got a severe illness, Apple’s stock went south. That’s how powerful the effect of founders can be. If we startups stick with each other and support each other, I believe in three to five years’ time, our investment ecosystem will be similar to the one in Silicon Valley.
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