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igital observers in Indonesia opine that business foresight, more than politics, has impelled the Bakrie Global Group to chip in US$25 million to Path, an online social network gaining traction in the country.

Tech publication, Recode.net, reported Saturday that Bakrie led a consortium of Silicon Valley investors, including Greylock Partners, to inject the $25 million as part of Path'€™s Series C round of funding.

Greylock has invested in digital giants such Facebook and Tumblr, a blogging site acquired by Yahoo! Inc.

Bakrie CEO, Anindya Bakrie, tweeted that Bakrie was '€œjust a fraction of the multiple investors'€.

He added that they had decided to chip in to '€œenhance the connectivity and productivity of Indonesians'€.

'€œAfter all, we are one of the largest users of Path,'€ he tweeted.

'€œWe would also like to impel Indonesians, especially young entrepreneurs, to join in the developments of information technology as well as global networking,'€ he said further.

In 2011, Anindya established the Nusantara Incubation Fund (NIF), which set aside $11 million to support domestic startups for the next three years.

Information and Communication Technology Watch executive director, Donny Budhi Utoyo, said that Bakrie'€™s move into Path was to place a firm foothold in the digital content business.

'€œThey already have a presence in the telecommunication infrastructure business, which has stagnated in growth,'€ he said.

The Bakrie Group has interests in PT Bakrie Telecom (BTEL), a code division multiple access (CDMA) operator, which booked a loss of Rp 1.5 trillion ($123 million) as of September 2013.

'€œThus, it'€™s now time for them to expand to digital content, which is on the rise as demonstrated by over-the-top [OTT] players such as Facebook and Twitter,'€ Donny added.

Internet information company, Alexa, ranked Path as the 264th most popular site in Indonesia, far above the site'€™s global rank of 8,901. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter took the spot as the second and tenth top sites respectively.

Path CEO Dave Morin stated that they had 23 million customers registered worldwide, as reported by Recode.net.

Donny added that investing in Path was also Bakrie'€™s way of expanding their media business. Bakrie Group has stake in PT Visi Media Asia (VIVA), which runs television stations, TVOne and ANTV, in addition to online news portal, viva.co.id.

VIVA recorded a 24.2 percent year-on-year rise in revenues to Rp 1.13 trillion as of September 2013, and has been mulling conducting an initial public offering (IPO) for ANTV.

'€œThe investment in Path was a business decision. As for politics, why not? After all, they already have television stations,'€ he said. Anindya'€™s father, Aburizal Bakrie, is running for president in the 2014 elections.

Meanwhile, Merah Putih Inc. CEO, Antonny Liem, added that Bakrie had channeled investments toward Path, a foreign startup, given that the online social media had reached a significant size.

'€œBakrie is a big-time investor with an ample fund base but domestic startups, given their small size, can only absorb small amounts of investment. Meanwhile, the larger domestic startups have all been snapped up,'€ he said.

Merah Putih is a tech startup incubator affiliated with the Djarum Group. Like the Bakrie Group, it is a dominant business conglomerate in the country. Djarum'€™s Michael Hartono has invested in various tech companies such as Kaskus.com and Blibli.com.

Antonny added that having Bakrie'€™s support was also beneficial for Path.

'€œThey can push for more users from Indonesia,'€ he said.

He added that the future issue for Bakrie related to monetizing their investment in Path. Path currently sells '€œstickers'€ for Rp 19,000 per pack and enables users to upgrade to premium accounts by paying between Rp 49,000 and Rp 139,000.

'€œPath already has millions of users and there are many ways to capitalize on this in the future, such as through advertisements or business intelligence,'€ he said.