Indonesia Tech Deals Vol. IV – April 2022

In continuation to our previous Tech Deals series (Tech Deals Vol. 1 , Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 ), we provide herein, the recent tech deals completed between the period of 1 January and 31 March 2022, and our commentary regarding the same.

During this period, the completed start-up and tech investments are quite diverse. They consist of companies in different sectors of technology. In addition to the usual investments, we get to see the GoTo Group’s IPO during this period. It was dubbed as one of the largest IPOs in Asia this year. The GoTo IPO was also the first one that utilized the multiple voting shares (MVS) scheme, which will likely attract more tech unicorns and decacorns alike to go public in Indonesia ( please see section III of this Tech Deals Vol. 4 for our commentaries on the IPO stage of Indonesian Tech Companies ).

Overall, it has been a great start of the year especially for tech investments in Indonesia.

I. Start Up and Tech Investment Deals in the period between 1 January and 31 March 2022

Please refer to the table below on the list of Tech Deals that have been completed during the period from 1 January to 31 March 2022:

II. NLP Commentary to Recent Tech Deals

With the massive vaccination program, the Ministry of Health has stated that Indonesia will transition out of the pandemic state into the endemic state. This is followed by the easing of health-and-safety protocols in some public spaces as the number of Covid-19 cases is slowly decreasing. The Indonesian government has also eased restrictions for foreigners travelling to Indonesia. Mandatory quarantine is no longer required for travelers who have been vaccinated. With life generally starting to return to normal, people’s mobility will increase and economic activities will be triggered. Investments will slightly change, meaning that opportunities in some other technology-based sectors are increasing.

In the previous period, health-tech, Edu-tech, and grocery e-commerce, which enable digitalization of health-and-education services and grocery shopping from the comfort our homes, were the most attractive sectors. With the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, it appears that more investors are now into e-commerce, fintech, and agro-tech businesses. Some new sectors such as parenting ( i.e. , Tentang Anak), clean energy tech ( i.e. , Powerchain, Xurya), and media are gaining interests.

Our data shows that fintech still dominates the start-up funding and will continue to do so, given that many fintech players in Indonesia are entering maturity stage.

In addition to fintech, a new trend of agro-tech start-ups appears to increase the investment flow. In the first three months of 2022 alone, the agro-tech sector managed to raise more than IDR 3.1 trillion fund, which exceeded the total funding collected from this particular sector the previous year.

III. IPO and Beyond for Indonesian Tech Giants

Having seen the successful IPO of GoTo using the MVS scheme, it appears that many other tech companies are considering IPO in the near future. Investors of many Indonesian tech companies are also supporting the approach given that major investors of GoTo such as Alibaba, SoftBank, and Sequoia Capital have made substantial profits from GoTo’s IPO.

Given the promising outlook of onshore IPO in the Indonesia Stock Exchange, companies such as Traveloka, Tiket, and Kredivo are considering listing in Indonesia rather than in the United States through SPAC. The Indonesia Financial Services Authority ( Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or ” OJK “) has issued several regulations to make IDX a more attractive space for going public.

In addition to IPO, Indonesian public in general is substantial consumers of tech products, resulting in an even more exciting growth of the tech market.

Note: You can download the complete article here .

The article above was prepared by Marshall S. Situmorang (Partner) and Audria Putri (Senior Associate).