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Many start-ups still immature despite govt funding
The Research Ministry has injected Rp 175 billion (US$12.4 million) into new start-ups in the last two years
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Bank Central Asia (BCA) is collaborating with start-up accelerator program Digitaraya, which is powered by tech giant Google, to launch a new accelerator project called SYNRGY as an innovation hub for start-ups. (Antara/Audy Alwi)
The Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry has channeled millions of dollars to fund thousands of local technology start-ups over the past four years. But despite the impressive support, many of these companies are still performing poorly.
“The government has so far chased high training targets for start-ups without evaluating [their progress] and realizing that many of them have failed,” said Indonesian E-commerce Association (idEA) chairman Ignatius Untung
He added that several ministries have been either launching or scaling various start-up programs in response to an ongoing euphoria over Indonesia’s digital economy. For example, the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry, through its tech-based start-up (PBBT) program, has funded 1,307 start-ups over the past four years. However, nearly half of them are still at the prototype stage and, therefore, not ready for commercial operation, Ignatius said.
In raising awareness about government-funded start-ups, the ministry recently hosted the Indonesia Start-Up Summit (ISS) in Jakarta, where it displayed 60 prominent start-ups from a wide range of sectors, such as food, health care, energy, transportation, IT communications, security, raw materials and advanced materials.
“Indonesia is number one in Southeast Asia and number five worldwide in the number of start-ups it has,” Research Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir during said the summit’s opening.
The minister was citing data provided by Startupranking.com, which indicates that Indonesia has 2,092 start-ups, the highest number in the region and fifth-highest worldwide.
