Indo Tekno Podcast

Alan Hellawell

A podcast devoted to covering major trends that drive the Indonesian tech scene.

  1. 05/05/2024

    Charity as the Nucleus of Financial Innovation: Vikra Ijas of Kitabisa

    According to a report by Charities Aid Foundation, Indonesia is considered the world’s most generous nations. Kitabisa Co-founder and CEO Vikra Ijas attributes Indonesia's global leadership in giving over the past six years to "religious and cultural influences" that have shaped "a very collectivist society." Kitabisa is Indonesia's largest online crowdfunding platform for social and personal medical causes. The company last year acquired a life insurance company, largely as an extension to its Saling Jaga offering (trans. "protecting each other), which is a mutual aid program where members can protect each from critical illness. Vikraan, an Endeavor Entrepreneur,  explains the diversification as a move beyond crowd-funding, which is "limited to a more reactive or responsive type of aid," to becoming "more strategic and prepared for future risks, which is facilitated license-wise through insurance." Kitabisa currently facilitates roughly one donation every second, and is moreover now emerging into one of the country's fastest-growing digital life insurance platforms. Vikra also reflects on the persistent guidance and support that Kitabisa's board members have offered the company, particularly e-commerce platform Bukalapak co-founders Achmad Zaky and Fajrin Rasyid.

  2. 29/01/2024

    Combatting Complexities to Home Ownership, End-to-End: Dayu Dara Permata of Pinhome

    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. The company has sought to digitize as much of this historically fraught process as possible through a marketplace architecture. Ensuring "seamless onboarding and making the journey of uploading, publishing listings, etc. frictionless" has been key. A five-year veteran of Gojek having led its Lifestyle & Commerce Product Group, Dara discusses how that role helped inspire Pinhome's novel "Home Services" offering which, among other things has driven down the platform's CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) while maximizing LTV (Customer Lifetime Value).

  3. 24/01/2024

    Deep in the Seaweed: Dodon Yamin of BANYU

    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 inefficient and "leaky" industry supply chain, and 3) the use of IOT-based (Internet of Things) equipment and software to generate data that can be aggregated, stored and analysed for better farming results. Impressed by the success of fellow ITB alumnus Gibran Huzaifah at eFishery (podcasts Season 1 Episode 14 and Season 5 Episode 5), Dodon acknowledges the need for broader investor understanding of Indonesia's rising "aquatech" movement. BANYU has set an ambitious goal of 10x growth both this year and next, seeking to position itself as a key player in unlocking the country's seaweed opportunity.

  4. 18/12/2023

    A Musician Orchestrating Synergies Across Small Merchants: TJ Tham of tjufoo

    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 small Indonesian merchants requires a "keen eye for pattern recognition." A brand aggregator team like tjufoo commonly invests in or acquires small merchants, and then applies specific expertise to multiply the merchant's growth. tjufoo's favorite sectors are currently consumer electronics, home & living and FMCG (consumables). Although some of tjufoo's global brand aggregator peers have gone bankrupt of recent, the company's leadership team feels it has struck a more sustainable business model, not by solving a succession of discrete problems, but by introducing the "processes (and) the frameworks to help small merchants grow sustainably in the long term."

  5. 11/12/2023

    A Brand Builder Now Enabling an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: James Prananto of Kopi Kenangan

    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 founded Kopital Ventures to leverage their expertise and networks of contacts for the latest generation of Indonesian entrepreneurs. "It also allows me to give back to the community by growing the Indonesian startup ecosystem."  The most defining value-add that Kopital offers its investee founders is "the amount of time that we spend with the founders." While James has found the latest crop of Indonesian entrepreneurs much more daring than their predecessors, he urges the country's younger founders to "dream bigger".

  6. 04/12/2023

    Morphing the Mushroom into a Leather Alternative: Adi Nugroho of MYCL

    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 alternatives to the highly pollutive animal leather fabrication process. In harvesting a targeted 250,000 sq ft of mushrooms next year, MYCL can displace leather production which would otherwise create 430 tons of CO2 emissions, result in the slaughter of 7,000 cows and turn up to 1. 5 million liters of fresh water into tanning effluent.

  7. 27/11/2023

    Improving Monetization for Indo's Online Authors: Ario Tamat of KaryaKarsa

    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 give money directly to their favorite creators in return for them continuing to create their favorite work?" The business indeed seems to have found successful product-market fit selling weekly serialized stories. "We have 240,000 creators. Some 50% of them are writers and our current user base is 1.8 million registered users". An EBITDA-positive business, the company intends to add further categories and functionality to perpetuate its nearly 2X growth year-on-year.

  8. 20/11/2023

    Still Plenty of Fish in the SEA and Around the World: Gibran Huzaifah

    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 around unforeseen headcount and leadership expansion. Gibran also details the company's growing profusion of financial services (many offered through third party partners). These services are all powered by eFishery's big data-enabled credit scoring capabilities. eFishery is "the largest aquaculture technology company globally right now," he states. Gibran also walks listeners through eFishery's entry into the Indian market, and discusses his motivations to export to the competitive US market.

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About

A podcast devoted to covering major trends that drive the Indonesian tech scene.

Information

  • Creator
    Alan Hellawell
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2024
  • Episodes
    136
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Alan Hellawell
  • Show Website
    Indo Tekno Podcast