E-commerce Integration as Igloo’s Strategy to Increase the Insurance Product Penetration

Igloo, known as Axinan, is a Singapore-based insurtech which available in some Southeast Asia members, including Indonesia. Recently, the company announced series A+ worth of US$16 million or around 238.4 billion Rupiah. Intouch Holdings PLC led this round with the participation of Openspace Ventures, Linear Capital, and some investors from the previous round.

In this round, the company also announced a rebranding valid for all products and services throughout the operational areas as per April 2020, from Axinan to Igloo.

Previously, Igloo app arrived in Indonesia through collaboration with Sompo Indonesia (Japan-based insurance company) in the mid-2019. It’s targeting millennials, with various kinds of insurance products, such as for gadgets, travel inquiries, and online shopping insurance. There are currently local teams in Jakarta, led by Country Manager.

In terms of online shopping insurance, or stated in the official site as “transit insurance”, they already formed a partnership with local e-commerce, including Bhinneka, Bukalapak, and Tokopedia. There are also other platforms as well, such as Shopee, Lazada, and many more.

Regarding its partnership with local players, Igloo Indonesia’s Country Manager, Anggoro Kusumo said, “Igloo has collaborated with several e-commerce services with protection services such as freight insurance (after purchasing), for lost or damaged goods, personal accident insurance, fire insurance property, etc. All of these insurance services are offered in collaboration with insurance companies in Indonesia that have been registered with the OJK. ”

Igloo will use fresh money to improve services through firming technological capabilities, patents, also recruitment and development of human resources. In addition, Igloo will also focus on new customer acquisition, dynamic risk assessment, and accelerate the claim process; all of which will be offered by Igloo insurance partners through an open platform.

Patents become one of Igloo’s most concerned services, recently they obtained a patent for smartphone’s screen assessment technology to support one of their services.

Insurance products as supporting lifestyles are indeed new commodities some players continue to explore. Aside from Igloo, there are other insurtechs offer similar products. For example, PasarPolis, they sell travel protection and gadget protection insurance. Most recently, they also collaborated with Gojek to present the GoSure channel in the Gojek ecosystem.

A view on insurtech marketshare

Ingloo’s Founder & CEO, Wei Zhu said in his speech, the company has seen growth in Southeast Asia’s digital insurance sector. This is a great opportunity for related services to be able to capture these opportunities and provide answers to consumer demands.

The former Grab’s CTO also added, despite its huge potential, the penetration of digital insurance products in the region is only around six percent. It is said the Southeast Asian digital insurance industry is currently valued at US$ 2 billion and is expected to continue to increase to US $ 8 billion in 2025.

According to the DSResearch report titled “Insurtech Report 2019“, data on awareness about insurtech services in Indonesia – especially for services directly targeted on users, is not through integration into third-party platforms. Of the total 1296 respondents using insurance services, 69.44% are aware of insurtech. Insurtech products are considered effective in helping the registration process, claims, to find out about the latest promos of insurance products.

Platform insurtech populer di Indonesia — Most popular insurtech platforms in Indonesia

The survey also mentioned about the most familiar platform with respondents. Asuransiku, AXA Mypage, Asuransi88, PasarPolis, and JagaDiri are some of the most popular.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

Moka Remains an Open Platform Post Gojek Acquisition

After widely rumored for the past few months, today (30/4) Gojek officially announced its acquisition of Moka. This corporate action is the company’s first step in combining services to provide integrated solutions for business partners (merchants), which include payment services, food delivery, and point-of-sale systems, therefore, to support the growth and digitalization of online and offline SMEs.

Moka will continue to operate as an independent entity post the acquisition, integrated with the Gojek merchant ecosystem. The ecosystem consists of GoBiz (the super app that houses GoFood), GoPay, and other services such as Midtrans and Spots. Spots is an mPOS product that is circulated for GoFood merchants, as a result of a combination of Nadipos and Kartuku which both were acquired by Gojek.

Moka told DailySocial that they will remain an open platform and are very open to continuing collaboration with all partners, either the current or in the future. Moka allows merchants to receive payments from digital wallets such as Gopay, Ovo, Dana, and others.

“We are very excited to be part of the Gojek ecosystem and accelerate our mission to help small businesses continue to grow. Gojek is the largest consumer application in Indonesia and this integration will create business networks to hundreds of millions Gojek users and get direct transactions from services like GoFood,” Moka’s Co-Founder & CEO, Haryanto Tanjo said.

Meanwhile, Gojek’s Co-CEO Andre Soelistyo said, “We are always working to help more offline businesses to online businesses to participate in developing the digital economy and working with Moka and its network of businesspeople will help us to accelerate the realization of this mission.”

Previously, the acquisition was reportedly agreed at US$ 130 million or equivalent to 2 trillion Rupiah. This corporate step is part of the planned expansion of Gojek products and services following the acquisition of Series F funding that has been raised since 2018.

To date, Moka has been used by 40 thousand businesses in 200 cities in Indonesia by providing POS equipment solutions, payment systems, bookkeeping, raw material procurement, and business capital lending. While Gojek, through the service of GoBiz, has embraced 500 thousand business partners, of which 96% are claimed by SMEs.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

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Shooper App to Facilitate Users Comparing Prices from Various Stores

Frugal becomes one of the most basic economic principles. That principle is increasingly relevant in such crisis as the current situation. A brand-new startup named Shooper offers a solution that fits the condition by creating a platform to find the cheapest food ingredients. The platform allows users to compare prices in many stores at once to find the most affordable.

Shooper’s Founder & CEO, Oka Simanjuntak said the platform was a community sharing application. This cannot be separated from the establishment of Shooper who was inspired by a group of housewives in Bintaro, South Tangerang, who often shared information about the prices of household needs in the shops around their homes. Simanjuntak, who also had difficulty comparing prices, took the idea and applied it to Shooper.

Shopping receipt as the key

With the crowdsourcing method, Shooper began operating since January this year as an application on Android. The main ability of this platform is how they collect data from shopping receipts. Shooper uses artificial intelligence to read receipts and then analyze the data to see consumer behavior. Analysis of the data then becomes a way of monetization for Shooper.

“Almost all companies successful with analytics, mind to share user data, but they find user patterns interacting on the platform. Therefore, it’s not personal data, but behavior pattern data,” Simanjuntak said via an online press conference.

The other monetization strategy is by using specific target ads. With so many shopping receipts uploaded by users, Shooper can find the characteristics of each user that associate ads to their behavior.

User acquisition target

With these capabilities, Shooper offers a number of features for its users ranging from the lowest price comparison in many supermarkets, making shopping lists, loyalty programs, to shopping report features within a month. All are connected with the Shooper algorithm which helps users get the best price for their basic daily needs.

About three months into operation, he claims the platform has partnered with 1300 stores consisting of supermarkets, minimarkets, or other non-supermarket stores, the majority of which are in South Jakarta and South Tangerang. However, some shops in South Sumatra, Jambi, Papua, Kalimantan and Bali have already covered by them. They chose the offline store because the number of people who shop there is still far greater than in online stores.

Simanjuntak said, the price of household items in online stores is indeed cheaper, but shipping costs make it more expensive than offline stores. He also added that food expenditure could reach 50% of the total expenditure of a household.

“When being compared, transportation spending is only around 9% but there are already two large unicorns from the transportation sector,” he added.

Currently, there are around 1200 Shooper users with 60% actively using it. The products they have recorded has reached more than 10,000 items. Shooper funding status is still running in bootstrap with the help of angel investors. “We hope there will be 100 users at the end of the year and within 2-3 years we can reach 1 million users,” Simanjuntak said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

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Prixa Expands Digital Health Service, Targeting B2B and B2G

A startup that provides technology for health industry, Prixa, is targeting more B2B and B2G collaborations in order to achieve its vision to democratize technology in this sector. Currently, the company has partnered up with other industries, such as Alfa Group, DAV, We+, and the latest one os Generali Insurance.

Prixa’s Co-founder & CEO, James Roring revealed, the service was build to humanize the digital health service through data and technology. Therefore, the B2B service will continue to be accessible for more people can use kinds of services on Prixa.

It is said in the insurance sector, Prixa has served more than two million policyholders through cooperation with a number of insurance companies. Furthermore, Prixa is claimed to have contributed to increasing partner efficiency by maximizing the integration of the use of the Prixa symptom check system and telecommunications features that can reduce spending by 30% -40% for outpatient claims only.

“To further improve efficiency, meet the needs of partners and users, Prixa is developing additional features for our platform to be able to serve comprehensive health services,” he told DailySocial.

Together with Generali Insurance, Prixa is the AI technology partner for Doctor Leo’s features in the iClick Gen application. This technology is used by Generali who wants to run the tele-consulting and other tele-health services more efficiently. For example, checking for symptoms and detecting more than 600 types of diseases.

Generali Insurance customers can consult with live chat, voice calls, and video calls for free via smartphone devices. It is hoped that Doctor Leo can reduce the burden of medical staff in detecting early symptoms of a disease, especially related to Covid-19.

“We comply with all government regulations regarding data privacy and the use of personal information. In addition, we regularly undergo penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited in a cyber-attack scenario.”

Partnership with the government

Aside from B2B partners, Prixa also has a B2G partnership with the Government of West Java Province. The company is an asset and one of the early filters for the detection and countermeasures for the Covid-19 pandemic for 50 million local residents.

Further explained, the Prixa system analyzes the answers given by users based on complaints and related questions, as will be asked by doctors. Then, the Prixa system processes these answers and provides the results of possible conditions based on the information submitted.

“Ours is an evidence-based analysis system, where our team of doctors studies the results of research and research publications, utilizes the results, and combines them with guidelines set by WHO and the Ministry of Health to build a comprehensive tool for assessing symptoms and risks.”

In order to fasten the expansion plan, James revealed that his team is considering raising new funding at the end of this year. Without further details, Prixa has been supported by strategic partners in the Health and technology sector as its investors.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

Tokopedia Releases Live Shopping Feature Tokopedia Play

Entering the Ramadan season amid pandemic, Tokopedia launches some innovations to facilitate all the users. The innovations including additional feature for sellers, Tokopedia Play, and Live Shopping feature.

Tokopedia’s AVP of Product, Priscilla Anais said, Ramadan season is identic with increasing transaction, particularly amid pandemic, online shopping becomes an alternative to minimize the outbreak. In order to keep the local business, the company has released some innovations to boost sellers’ productivity.

“We also present a new content experience for buyers through Tokopedia Play and the convenience of direct shopping through the Buy Direct feature,” he said on a video conference, yesterday (4/27).

In addition to those three, Tokopedia also added specialty food and beverages (F&B) product curation that were most sought during the pandemic and Ramadan season. The F&B category classifies prepared foods, frozen foods, and snacks. This curation aims to make it easier for the seller to meet with potential buyers with maximum browsing speed.

“During Covid-19, we created a special page so that consumers can find products for sale closest to their location. ”

The increase in transactions during the pandemic at Tokopedia is claimed to be quite exponential, both from the purchase and the number of sellers. Anais was reluctant to spare the details. However, she gave an illustration of Tokopedia’s last year sales of around 5 million, while this year it was 7.8 million.

She predicted the increase was triggered by the number of businesses that were forced to close physical stores and limit operations due to the pandemic. Eventually, they slowly shifted their business from offline to online.

“In fact, the growth is exponential. We experienced a dramatic rise in new sellers during the Covid-19 period. Most are offline sellers who migrate online.”

In terms of the categories of widely purchased products, the increase happened to be personal care and health, entertainment products, and products to support work and study from home.

As explained, from 7.8 million sellers who joined, more than half manage the business through the application. They market more than 250 million products to more than 90 million monthly active users of Tokopedia.

Three new innovations

Tokopedia Seller App

Transformasi Aplikasi untuk Penjual Tokopedia — App transformation for Tokopedia sellers

Tokopedia has made a number of transformations on specific applications for sellers to increase their productivity. This application has been released since last year, available in the Android version only. The additional feature named the quick reply chat feature to make it easier for the seller to reply to the message from the buyer via notification, without having to open the application.

Next, a weekly summary of sales and orders that makes it easy for sellers to see sales summary, store performance, orders, and transaction constraints. “Buyers in Indonesia are quite demanding, wanting the message to be quickly returned. We facilitate it for sellers, without having to open the application, “explained Head of Product Seller Platform Nadhira Ayuningtyas.

Furthermore, the shop’s homepage can now be personalized according to the seller’s needs to make it look attractive. They can display campaigns, superior products, and promotions. “We’ve added many widgets to the application so that the seller gets priority which activities they should do.”

According to Nadhira, sellers who have downloaded the Tokopedia Seller application no longer need to download the main application. Nevertheless, the new application is available for the Android version and immediately follows the iOS version. The application has been developed since the end of last year.

Tokopedia Play

The second innovation is Tokopedia Play to provide a live shopping experience or live shopping and interact with content creators. This concept is not new to other e-commerce companies. As a differentiator, Tokopedia makes live streaming shows by autoplay by adjusting the quality of the buyer’s network at that time.

“We’ve come up with solving consumer problems. We place Tokopedia Play on the home page to make it easily visible. We present technology by autoplay, when connected to Wi-Fi, the streaming content will automatically play. When the signal is bad, only the banner will appear,” Tokopedia Play’s Head of Product Cynthia Limin said.

Direct Purchase

The last one, a Direct Purchase feature is to speed up the shopping process with just one click. Payment and shipping methods are automatically recommended by the Tokopedia system according to the preferences or habits of each buyer. This feature is still in the testing phase for some users.

Tokopedia Deo Nathaniel’s Head of Product Purchase Platform explains, this feature is more directed to accommodate impulsive buyers and only purchase one product. If more than one product in one basket will be directed to the method as usual.

“Impulsive buyers are loyal users who are familiar with checkout flow at Tokopedia. They used to use the same payment method. To improve their experience, we created a Direct Purchase feature. ”

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

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Helicap Fintech Secures Over 155 Billion Rupiah Funding from Saison Capital

The Singapore-based fintech Helicap announced Series A funding worth of $10 million (over Rp155 billion) led by Saison Capital, an investment ar of Japan-based consumer finance Credit Saison. The fund is available as equity issuance and managed fund placement of Asset Under Management (AUM) in the form of Redeemable Preference Shares.

Participated also the previous investor, East Venture, and the new ones, Access Capital, Lamivoie multi-family asset management, and other High Networth Individuals.

In total, Helicap has raised nearly $18 million in funding. The latest funding is said to be used to spur business expansion, improve credit scoring technology, and expand private debt investment products to overcome market turmoil due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Helicap’s Co-Founder and CEO David Z. Wang explained that the Series A round was based on the company’s performance that exceeded expectations for the past year, including obtaining a Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) business license from the MAS authority (Monetary Authority of Singapore) for children Helicap investment management.

Moreover, through the acquisition of Arcor Capital securities companies, the company now has a capital market business license (Capital Markets Services) for the sale and purchase of capital market products. Arcor Capital was acquired last year at an unspecified value.

“We are very proud of Credit Saison’s participation in the line of top investors and we will soon announce a number of strategic initiatives with Saison Capital next month,” Wang said in an official statement on Tuesday (28/4).

Yet to registered in OJK

When obtaining funds in 2018, Helicap plans to expand to Indonesia. In 2020, as Helicap obtaining various licenses in Singapore, the company is yet to obtained permits from OJK or registered as an association member.

This should be Helicap’s next focus. The company announced Ilham Akbar Habibie as Special Advisor. Ilham is the President Commissioner of Bank Muamalat and Co-Founder of Ilthabi Rekatama, a private investment company. His presence is expected to help Helicap sharpen its business in Indonesia, as one of the company’s main markets.

“I’m excited to work together and become an advisor to fintech companies like Helicap. […] Data-based companies such as Helicap will play an important role in the alternative lending market,” Ilham mentioned.

Helicap calls itself the Capital as a Services platform covering B2B2C service. They do not provide loans directly, but channel loans from organizations that have become partners by providing guarantees from the data analysis conducted.

The company holds access to credit data collected by various financial organizations. The data proceed in such ways that provide insight for investment allocation. It is considered to be a “helicopter view” or a comprehensive understanding of the business to be invested.

Helicap focuses on credit analytic technology and strict scoring models in examining millions of lending data points from various issuing platforms, allowing Helicap’s subsidiaries to provide risk-adjusted returns to investors.

“Southeast Asia is the most growing economic region, driven by SMEs. In fact, that growth also results in a fragmented loan ecosystem, unable to serve capital loans for business as a whole,” Wang revealed.

The company is based in Singapore with a wide area coverage in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Australia.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

Qoala Insurtech Platform Bags 209 Billion Rupiah Series A Funding

The insurtech company founded by Harshet Lunani and Tommy Martin has secured another funding, a Series A round worth of $13.5 million or around 209 billion Rupiah. The current round was led by Centauri Fund.

There are new investors involved in this round, such as Sequoia India, Flourish Ventures, Kookmin Bank Investments, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and Mirae Asset Sekuritas. The previous investors include Bank Central Asia’s investment arm Central Capital Ventura, MDI Ventures, Surge, MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia, and SeedPlus.

The company is to use fresh money to invest further in technology, HR and brands in order to support the company’s strategy in providing better services to customers, platform partners, and insurance companies. Qoala targets to employ 300 talents by the year 2021.

“Through this funding, we will invest further in technology, HR, and brands to be able to support our strategy in providing better services to customers, platform partners, and insurance companies,” Qoala’s Co-Founder and COO Tommy Martin said.

Previously, Qoala secured seed funding of $ 1.5 million (equivalent to 21.6 billion Rupiah) from Sequoia Capital India (Surge). Some other players engaged in the similar industry include PasarPolis, Fuse Insurtech, and 9Lives.

Insurance product for Covid-19

Tim dan manajemen Qoala — Qoala team and management

Qoala is to launch a product innovation for special insurance that covers Covid-19 for individuals and SMEs.This product is to complete the BPJS Health service by providing additional benefits.

“Particularly in the current crisis and the PSBB situation, we see an increasing need for innovation to support the insurance industry especially the limitations of offline product marketing,” said Tommy.

As an insurance technology platform, Qoala claims to have been able to process more than 2 million policies per month, up from the previous 7,000 policies per month in March 2019. Qoala has also expanded its services to cover five core industries, namely tourism, fintech, retail, logistics, and employees’ health.

“As a newcomer to the insurance / Insurtech technology industry, we are pleased to have the trust of leading global investors who continue to support us in developing innovations in insurance technology. This support makes us very optimistic in achieving Qoala’s vision and mission in promoting insurance and facilitating insurance access for all people,” Qoala’s Founder and CEO, Harshet Lunani said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

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Achmad Zaky’s New Investment Firm Init-6, Debuts with Seed Funding for Eduka

Bukalapak’s Co-founder and Founding Partner Init-6, Achmad Zaky announced the new investment firm focused on investment to early-stage startups. Bukalapak’s Co-founder, Nugroho Herucahyono also participated as Partner after resigned as the CTO. Init-6 debuts with its first investment to the edtech platform Eduka.

Zaky, after officially steps down as Bukalapak’s CEO earlier this year said the Covid-19 pandemic has initiated the new managed fund. Init-6 is a UNIX command that means reboot or reset. According to Zaky, Covid-19 requires humans to live in a new kind of lifestyle (or known as “new normal”). They believe that we need to reboot or reset our way of life.

Prior to this, after no longer active in Bukalapak, Zaky is said to focus on foundations engaged in science and education, entrepreneurship, impact investment, and research.

To date, Zaky said the managed funds came from General Partners, none of them were from Limited Partners. Even so, he did not want to elaborate on this matter further, including how much funds under management at this time.

Init-6 will focus on investing in early-stage startups without specific sector preferences. “[The thing is] As long as it is tech-driven and backed with great founders,” Zaky said.

Investment on Eduka

Eduka is Init-6’s first startup investment. This educational technology platform was initiated by students and alumni of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Eduka was built as a practice platform (try out) for students to UTBK and USM at various universities. This platform claims to have 800 thousand registered users and 180 thousand active students every month.

Zaky said Eduka reminded him of his experience 10 years ago when building Bukalapak. The company has now become one of the unicorns in Indonesia.

He said, “When we first met the Eduka founders, we were very impressed with their achievements. They built [this platform] from scratch, without capital. […] We hope they can graduate quickly this year and develop Eduka even faster. Education is a big pie [opportunity] and we believe Eduka can have a better impact on the Indonesian education system. ”

“We built the Eduka System because we believe students in Indonesia have good academic potential if trained properly. Unfortunately, we know that there are many students who only focus on memorizing a theory without understanding its application. This makes it limited to the ability to solve complex problems. We want to unlock their potential by providing High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) exercises that are easy to apply and connect with everyday life so that they are accustomed to facing complex problems. With the help of technology, we believe we can improve [quality] education in Indonesia,” Eduka’s CEO [who still pursuing his degree], Faiz said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

Stoqo’s Shutdown and Survival Strategy for B2B Commerce

The corona pandemic has severed some culinary businesses in the country. The declining situation is inevitable due to the susceptive character of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) that forces people to do most activities at home.

Since the first Covid-19 case emerged in early March, the food business has reportedly continued to shrink. The loss has affected such players as the upper-middle-class restaurants and micro and small culinary enterprises. Digital platforms providing culinary business needs will also be affected. It happens to Stoqo.

Stoqo officially announced an operational shutdown. A few days before, the startup, which was led by Aswin Andrison as a Co-Founder & CEO, only announced that it had temporarily stopped operating. However, the pandemic finally forced them out of business.

“Since 2017, we have built STOQO to serve and empower SMEs in the culinary field in Indonesia. However, the situation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a drastic reduction in revenue for us,” Stoqo wrote on their website.

Pengumuman resmi berhenti beroperasi di situs Stoqo. — Shutdown operation announcement

Upcoming Hazard

Stoqo is a platform that focuses on providing basic food needs for places to eat, especially restaurants, catering cafes, and home-based culinary businesses. Stoqo supplies a variety of foods ranging from meat, vegetables, flour, coffee, and others.

Aswin stated that Stoqo was focused on playing in the B2B segment ever since. They realize the platform as a hub to meet the needs of culinary businesses. With the prospect of being considered quite brilliant, it’s no wonder Stoqo won series A funding from Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India at the end of December 2018.

However, the reality ended bitterly for Stoqo. The number of restaurants, cafes, and restaurants that stopped operating claimed their income. The Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association said that at least thousands of restaurants were closed due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The unfortunate events of B2B commerce business like Stoqo also happen to Eden Farm and Wahyoo. Although, the scale is yet to worrying. Eden Farm Founder & CEO, David Gunawan said there were two segments they generally served, namely restaurants and grocery stalls. Of the two, David said that the restaurant was hit by the bigger impact.

“It’s true that high-end restaurants and those in the mall are closed or shifting to delivery, half of our clients in the segment are closed,” David told DailySocial.

Meanwhile, Wahyoo Founder & CEO Peter Shearer shared a similar experience. A number of stalls affiliated with Wahyoo have stopped operating, especially those located in office areas. Peter also did not mention the exact number. But he made sure other stalls were not seriously affected by this outbreak, especially those located in residential and settlement areas.

Survival strategy

Although the impact is not as severe as Stoqo’s experience, a prolonged pandemic can be a scourge for the sustainability of the Wahyoo and Eden Farm businesses. Special strategies are needed so that they avoid the same fate of Stoqo.

Peter mentioned the problem is to keep the request ongoing. The trick to Wahyoo’s demand has been to help stalls sell on digital platforms such as Go-Food. At the same time, the implementation of large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) in many regions has shifted shopping patterns in Wahyoo.

“The positive impact is that the PSBB and Covid-19 have forced the food stall owners to adapt faster,” he added.

On the other hand, Eden Farm, which clients are mostly grocery stores, has another strategy to stay afloat during this pandemic. David said they now rely on the agency system to reach buyers who are reluctant to leave the house.

David rejects this new system as B2C. He said that his party only reactivated the group purchasing model, which actually existed since last year but was only revived three weeks ago.

Changes in segment composition also helped Eden Farm from the majority of their clients, restaurants and middle-up restaurants to the majority of SMEs. David said that currently 80% of their clients are middle-to-lower business people.

“We’re still getting new customers, the customer purchase growth is ongoing. Indeed, it was reducing in the early days [the pandemic], but it was back [normal] again after a few weeks,” said David.

PHRI Deputy Chairman for the Restaurant Sector Emil Arifin said there were already thousands of restaurants that had stopped operating throughout Indonesia. The estimated figure comes from the number of restaurants scattered in 327 malls that have been closed out of a total of 700 malls. In other words, more than 8,000 restaurants have closed.

“That does not include restaurants in office buildings, stand alone, in tourist parks and other facilities outside the mall. If you want to add up all of them, I think twice,” Emil explained to DailySocial.

Under this situation, Emil estimates that the culinary business in the country has lost around Rp2.5 trillion per month with 200 thousand people losing their jobs.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian

Quest Ventures Secures First Round of Asia Fund II

Quest Ventures has announced the first round of venture capital fund at $50 million or around Rp778 billion. It is claimed to exceed half of the total target for Asia Fund II.

Previously, in Asia Fund I, Quest Ventures is actively looking for startup with growth potential. Some of their portfolios, including Carousell, Shopback, 99.co, Carro, StyleTheory, SGAG/MGAG/PGAG, Glife, Xfers, and others. In the Asia Fund II, Quest Ventures is backed by some partners, including Singapore-based Pavillion Capital and QazTech Ventures from Kazakhstan.

“We deliberately chose investors because we value financial and operational contributions. Before becoming investors, as operators alone, we value what a diverse team can bring. With this fund, we hope to bring a variety of skills, experience, and connections to help our company,” Quest Ventures’ Partner, Yiping Goh said.

Asia Fund II is to focus on startups in the Southeast Asia region and those with development around Asia. Having previously entered Vietnam in Asia Fund II, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines are on the radar as their targets in the Post Seed and Pre-Series B rounds.

Quest Ventures also plans to launch an accelerator in Kazakhstan to start a digital economy in the region.

“We see founders who have a strong business and operational foundation who solve problems with women to develop significantly,” Goh added.

Quest Ventures was a China-based firm founded by James Tan and Wang Yunming in 2011. They have an office in Singapore with two Partners, namely Yiping Goh and Jeffrey Seah. Goh had previously been involved in the establishment of Matahari Mall.

Indonesia and the pandemic

DailySocial had the opportunity to talk with Quest Ventures about the company’s focus. Indonesia is on the Asia Fund II radar. As one of the countries with a developing technological landscape, Indonesia has succeeded in proving itself by delivering unicorns. Several industries, such as e-commerce, ride-hailing, and fintech, are taking turns becoming widely known and having an impact on society.

The government which includes the digital economy as one of the pillars of growth along with the raw supply, oil, palm oil, and textile industries is also one of the signs that technology is developing in this country.

“We hope that greater impact will be seen in EdTech, Healthcare, maybe Agritech and even the old topic of e-commerce still diverge opportunities in the enabler and trading ecosystem, such as offline to online, omnichannel, and others. We have seen several examples of successful players like that in the sectors mentioned and hope they continue to grow, “explained Yiping.

Nevertheless, there are several things that are of concern to the condition of Indonesia’s startup ecosystem and industry. First, due to Indonesia’s fast-growing startup business, funding is getting along the development. The challenge is to recruit employees in order to grow.

In Indonesia, Goh said, there are a lot of good talents, it’s just that they are yet to acquired by the increasing number of startups. In addition, the limited recruitment of foreign talent and face-to-face culture. It can also be that the same person will move from one startup to another. And the second is a matter of overvaluation.

“We also see a number of startups taking more money than they need. Although there’s nothing wrong raising more to a longer ‘tide over’, we also hope that startups don’t get into the wrong side of the comfort zone for too long and ‘throw fundamentals into the wind’, ” she added.

Just like countries around the world, Covid-19 pandemic also affected many things in Indonesia. Goh thought this pandemic acts like a big reset button for the world. This will return people to the old ways of building a business and with more balanced financial discipline and growth metrics.

“This [Condition] ‘New normal’ will see higher digital service requests from B2G, B2B, and B2C. Starting to make peace with remote collaboration and perhaps more equilibrium of topline vs bottom line,” Goh said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian