Established in May 2019, TMI is tasked with making investments and developing synergy and collaboration in various units in Telkomsel in order to spur the company’s digital transformation and to accelerate the development of various new services, enhance customer experience and optimize the company’s business.

TMI constitutes Telkomsel’s strategy to strengthen the company’s digital business trifecta: digital connectivity, digital platform and digital services. It is also part of Telkomsel’s effort to enable the industrial transformation, increase opportunities through sustainable synergy values and narrow the business gap. On top of that, TMI also aims to become a reliable partner for entrepreneurs in disrupting big market and maintain its leadership in the highly competitive market.

Telkomsel appointed Marlin R. Siahaan as TMI’s president director in June 2021. With more than 21 years of experience in media industry and digital technology, Marlin is expected to strengthen TMI’s positioning as a start-up partner that gives support to develop and empower the future solutions through strategic investment that is accurate and measured.

Her leadership is also expected to make TMI a reliable partner in driving the empowerment of digital entrepreneurs through comprehensive future solutions.

TMI focuses on five areas: 1) Commerce & Advertisement. The presence of TMI in this sector will support the future of commerce through multi-screens, cellular marketing, payment system and security. For that reason, TMI continues its commitment to explore new possibilities of ad-tech platform, and fintech for cellular, social and video.

2) Media & Entertainment. TMI will support the development of business service that integrates entertainment and appealing information into daily activities, by adopting further approaches to the implementation of leading related digital technology, such as augmented reality (AR), video reality (VR), video streaming, esports and social media.

 3) Connected Devices & Hardware. Broadly, TMI facilitates the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and the latest digital platforms among digital entrepreneurs to provide various positive benefits from the respective business.

 4) Data & Analytics. TMI cares about the importance of processing information into an outlook, that is converting the descriptive and diagnostic information into predictive and prescriptive data. Along with entrepreneurs, these will be developed with cutting-edge technology to report, visualize and understand the dynamic role that data plays in business operation.

 5) Infrastructure & Network. With the support of various innovations and leading digital solutions that Telkomsel possesses, TMI will provide large-scale efficiency through cloud, blockchain, management of identity and access, mobile endpoints, firewall, network services and virtualization technology.

With a notion that high-quality access to the right network is the key to investment that TMI makes, investment forms that TMI provides for digital-preneurs are primarily focused on Accelerate, Additional funds and Affiliates. Accelerate means helping TMI’s portfolio in maximizing return on investment (ROI) through the utilization of resources properly.

Additional funds are given to Telkomsel’s subunits that prioritize additional funds on consumers, enterprises and founders that have a low level of representation for some special reasons. With affiliates, investments that TMI makes are supported by collaborative relations across technology, media and entertainment and diverse global brands.

Aside from that, companies that become a partner of TMI will also gain comprehensive market knowledge, expertise in business model application, up-to-date sale channels and Telkomsel’s access as an enabler of digital connectivity for progress and growth.

Long-term partners

As part of Telkomsel investment, TMI has access to capital consistent with its total fund commitment that reaches US$40 million, which enables TMI to focus on its role as a founder, not a fundraiser. “With this, TMI is committed to becoming a long-term partner for entrepreneurs,” Marlin said.

TMI offers numerous benefits for start-ups eligible to be TMI’s partner. Aside from funding, the partners can utilize TMI’s ecosystem and assets such as Telkomsel’s large customer base, technology-based core businesses, IoTs-based businesses and big data business, which sets TMI apart from other venture capital companies. 

The role that TMI plays in building the digital ecosystem is seeking start-ups that have already displayed growth potential, which fall under the category of A series. TMI, in collaboration with other parties, assesses them and, when they meet the criteria, supports and accelerates their growth by providing what they need, be it capital or other kinds of supporting assistance.

TMI’s start-up partners are varied in terms of the business line, ranging from e-commerce, fintech, edutech and healthtech to entertainment and lifestyle.

TMI targets mostly local start-ups, but there is a likelihood to develop partnership synergy with overseas start-ups provided that the start-ups’ technology they are developing is new or a new frontier technology that is not yet available in the Indonesian market, according to Marlin.

Since its inception three years ago, TMI, along with a number of start-ups, has come up with solutions through investment and collaborations. TMI’s potential partners to date are Kredivo, PrivyID, Qlue, Haldoc, Tanihub, Tada, SiCepat, Roambee, Inspigo and Feedloop.

With regard to investment, TMI prioritizes new promising companies that have the potential to develop strategic collaboration to accelerate the company’s growth by utilizing access to ecosystem, asset and competencies that Telkomsel possesses. The collaboration is expected to enable the two partners to develop digital business stronger and utilize digital solutions that are more impactful for wider layers of society.

Along with Kredivo, a provider of instant credit payment solutions, TMI collaboratively conducts credit scoring by utilizing Telkomsel’s big data and providing options for payment in various products and services.

Halodoc, a health application that provides comprehensive and reliable health solutions, and TMI provided the bundling of health services and telemedicine consultation free of charge during the COVID-19 pandemic. TMI is trying to provide the entire health innovation services to facilitate health access.

Along with Tanihub, an agricultural ecommerce firm designed to cope with the supply chain and agricultural yield distribution issues, TMI provides ease of access to digital connectivity for farmers.

TMI worked together with Qlue to accelerate the development of smart cities. Qlue is a provider of comprehensive smart city utilizing AI and the IoT.

Recently, TMI put up funds in Feedloop, a start-up company engaged in software as a service (SaaS) which has No Code Development Platform or a platform without code, which aims to help corporations and small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) accelerate digital transformation in every business process through hyperautomation. With Feedlook, customers can create their own applications, such as an app for business management in an easy and simple way.

In further developing the digital ecosystem related to start-up partnership synergy, the synergy would be assessed after five years. If TMI sees the synergy has long term-prospects, then TMI may propose a joint venture to the potential start-up or acquire it to become one of Telkomsel’s digital units.

TMI hopes that for the short-term goal, start-ups that have become TMI’s partners understand the value that they can get, such as investment and synergy in order to grow.

While for the medium-term, which lasts for between five and seven years, TMI hopes the synergy really starts to bear fruit in terms of co-efficiency, revenue stream, business solutions and new creations that are invented collaboratively.

“For the long-term, TMI hopes that a thriving start-up that later launches an initial public offering (IPO) will tell a story in which Telkomsel with its valuable assets contributes to the growth,” Marlin said.

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