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Sharing Session: An Introduction to Indonesia's Startup Ecosystem (Live Blog)
Onto the next sharing session, we have Indonesia’s Andy Zain to share about his country’s startup ecosystem. Andy is the founder of Mobile Monday Indonesia and the director of Jakarta Founder’s Institute. Here’s what he got to say:
#12:51: Titled "Looking for startup worthy for Indonesian market." Andy kicks things off by sharing a few Indonesian data. With a population of 240 million people, Indonesia is an interesting and pretty much connected market. With 280 million mobile phone connections in the country - more SIM cards than the human number, Andy joked - 30 million of them subscribe to 3G connection.
#12:52: Andy carries more than one phones at a time, and there are about 80 percent mobile phone ownership in Indonesia. The PC or laptop ownership is at a really low five percent.
#12:54: Indonesia is very passionate, they don't only follow trend, but they also help create trend. Like Blackberry, Indonesians also help to shape the usage. Back in America, it is used by corporates, but in young Indonesians use it to socialize and have fun. That's why Blackberry in Indonesia isn't in boring black color, but on "bling-bling" fun color.
#12:56: Indonesia is a trend creator as the citizens are really fast in adopting technology. Indonesia conquered the UK and France when it comes to Facebook users. What drives them? The reason people use data on their phone because it's very cheap, said Andy. It costs US#2.5 to get 1GB data. Singapore has two or three times the price.
#12:58: 50 percent phones sold in Indonesia cost below $50. In average, mobile phones are priced at $90. You need to understand what device that they are using to approach them. 30 percent of the phones used in the country comes from local brands. The ads coming out in Indonesia mostly come from local brands.
#13:00: Only 25 percent of people have access to bank accounts, with only 16 million credit cards are around. The latter number is going down, not up, because the government is regulating the requirements for people to own credit cards.
#13:02: A few banks are trying to be creative, offering people to have a bank account without needing to have a bank account. People can now send fund to anyone as long as they have a phone number. They would only need to have a bank account if they want to withdraw the money. Another solution offered is Blackberry Money.
#13:04: 55 percent of Indonesians are below 30 years old. The next ten years is going to be very interesting. Looking at the population pyramid, a lot of people are going to grow into middle class, even bigger to other markets in Southeast Asia. Talking further details about devices, inside the next three years, feature phones are still going to be big. Nobody cares about feature phone markets, nobody are coming in and understand those area.
#13:06: A lot of Indonesian startups fail. Why? Because they don't focus on mobile market. A few of them focus on only 10 million Blackberry users, a few of them focus only on smartphone markets.
#13:08: Andy Zain shares survival tips when building your business in Indonesia. You need to create everything works on mobile phones. A lot of Indonesians are first time internet users, so you need to make the steps very simple. Most assumptions are wrong, like Blackberry is big. No, only half of them are using data connection, and only half of them are using full data packages. 95 percent Blackberry users are only using it for chat.
#13:09: ARPU is very low, selling things above 30 cents will be very difficult. Indonesians are quite price sensitive. You also need to have access to different distribution centers, particularly local ones. Don't just count on being available on one big portal.
This is his slide if you're curious:
This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Singapore 2013, our event running on April 4 and 5. For all our newest Startup Arena pitches, see here. You can follow along on Twitter at @techinasia, and on our Facebook page.
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