His statement raised more than a few eyebrows among industry stakeholders and members of the public, who have taken great pride in the homegrown unicorns: Gojek, Tokopedia, Bukalapak, and Traveloka.

Thomas was referring to a report released by American tech giant Google and Singaporean holding company Temasek, which shows that there were no unicorns – startups valued at more than US$1 billion – in Indonesia.

A graph in the report also shows that all four unicorns of Southeast Asia were based in Singapore.

“If we look at a study by Google and Temasek on the growth of the digital economy in Southeast Asia, our four unicorns are claimed to be owned [by Singapore]. I was surprised to see in the report that there are zero unicorns in Indonesia, while there are four in Singapore,” Thomas said during a presentation on Tuesday.

He went on to say that companies like Gojek, Traveloka, Bukalapak and Tokopedia had received funding from Singapore because they were all owned by a holding company in the country.

“The fact of the matter is, our four unicorns are all owned by a holding company in Singapore. All funding is received through Singapore. The funding was not in the form of investment but rather direct payments made by the holding company in Singapore to vendors or suppliers in Indonesia,” he added.

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