E27 Indonesia Satellite Event: A New Wave of Local Startups

Indonesia was the first country had the opportunity to host an Echelon Satellite event, whereby 16 elected startups were given 10 minutes to pitche their business in front of the judges. Around 300 enthusiasts attended the event. The time allocated actually includes the Q & A session, which makes the pitch more challenging. The rest are Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Satellites end with the Japan leg before the main Echelon event to be held in Singapore on mid June. Slightly different with last year event, this year’s Judges’ Choice Award was given to the startup which showed their best pitch in the sense of business feasibility and funding opportunity.

Co-organized with one of Indonesia’s startup communities, #StartupLokal, the Indonesia Satellite coincided with the organization’s second anniversary. The event was opened by Amazon Web Services with their bean bag session, followed by certain keynotes from Frenzoo CEO & Co-Founder Simon Newstead, and Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup’s Vincent Lauria. Known by his nickname, Vinny, he presented about his newly launched firm, Golden Gate Ventures. The venture itself was established to build stronger ties between Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley, and promote Singapore as Asia’s hub for new technology and innovation.

Sarim Aziz, RIM Developer Relations Team Lead for Asia Pacific, revealed some interesting facts. Notably, they have tied-up with 40 carriers in 30 countries worldwide, released 735 BBM connected apps with 183 million downloads since launched July last year. Indonesians are acknowledged to download more apps than any other users across the globe. To highlight, AppWorld has topped 6 million downloads per day.

Next presenter is 4ID founder and CEO Brynerio, shared his success story as technopreneur that get fully support from RIM as one of BlackBerry Alliance Members in Indonesia. The pitch was divided into two batches. The first one held at 2PM and continued with a panel discussion entitled Making Indonesia as the next IT hub. The second pitch started around 5PM. Both pitches lasted for approximately one hour.

Klik-Eat, an online food ordering and delivery service founded by U.S. university-educated locals, is the startup that received the Judges’ Choice Award. Launched last December under PT. Klik-Eat Indonesia serves Central and South Jakarta areas, and has managed to partner with 70 merchants, grab over 1,000 orders a month and get about 80% of repeat customers.

Moreover, the Top 50 startups from the Satellites will receive the chance to exhibit at the June Echelon event, while the top 10 will be entitled to pitch their product at the same event expected to attend by more than 1,100 delegates.

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