Startup Studio Indonesia (SSI), a government-initiated incubation program for early-stage startups, officially opened registration for the Batch 5 program in May. The intensive program, developed under the Ministry of Communications and Informatics (Kominfo), aims to assist and advance Indonesia’s early-stage digital startups to achieve product-market fit.

Spanning four months, participants are mentored by renowned startup founders, C-levels, and practitioners from diverse local and multinational companies, including Moses Lo (Co-Founder & CEO of Xendit), Gibran Huzaifah (Founder & CEO of eFishery), Dimas Harry Priawan (Co-Founder and CEO of Dekoruma), and many more from Gojek, Tiket.com, Halodoc, and HappyFresh.

SSI in total has supported 65 startup alumni to achieve promising results after graduating from the program, with the incubator reporting a total of $22.7 million (IDR332.1 billion) in funding channeled into the alumni. Each batch has consistently seen 30 to 40 percent of participants receive seed/pre-seed capital following completion.

“We are very proud to see the achievements of SSI alumni. Not limited to funding, what’s more important is that these early-stage startups can develop and have an increasingly significant impact on Indonesia’s economy and quality of life. We at Kominfo are committed to continuing empowering Indonesian startups to become agile, solutive, and able to reach their PMF, through SSI and other targeted programs,” said Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, Director General of Informatics Applications, Kominfo.

Progress and achievements from previous SSI participants

Verihubs

With the objective of becoming the most all-inclusive verification platform in Indonesia, Verihubs developed ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) solutions based on artificial intelligence technology to digitally onboard customers. Following their participation in the SSI program, the company launched new products including ‘Know Your Business’ to streamline the credit verification process, and ‘Know Your Employee’, a solution to support the pre-screening of potential new employees.

The company’s innovative solutions have resulted in Verihubs being awarded the best facial recognition technology in Indonesia for two consecutive years by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Today they process more than 4.5 million verifications per month and increased revenue by 25 times within one year. The company raised $2.8 million in seed funding in 2021 led by Insignia Venture Partners.

“Through the SSI program, the coaches openly shared the lessons they learned and errors they made while building their companies. I was able to gain insight not widely known or previously shared publicly through their experiences, which enormously helped me focus when building my own company,” said Williem, CTO and Co-Founder Verihubs.

LingoTalk

After participating in the program the LingoTalk progressed through two funding stages from several well-known investors including Kistech Pte Ltd., Iterative Capital, and Eduspaze by Spaze Ventures. The language education platform has also launched LingoJunior, a new product for the children’s segment (curriculum certified by Education Alliance Finland) as well as a Learning Management System, and the LingoParents feature to help parents monitor their children’s learning progress.

“One of the most important lessons we learned from SSI was the strategy to achieve product-market fit (PMF) and maximize company resources in this area. Currently, our PMF is on the LingoJunior product, which targets Kindergarten and elementary school students with a five percent growth in acquisition rate per week. Throughout 2022, we also aim to increase collaboration with 59 percent of the total elementary schools in Indonesia to build foreign language abilities from an early age, in order to produce talent equipped to compete on the global stage,” said Andre Benito, CEO of LingoTalk.

These examples and many more participants have benefited greatly from the SSI program, achieving growth, direction, experience and tangible results, with some receiving Seed Funding, including Justika and Praktis, Finku, Gajiku, Keyta, and Fishlog. In addition, Verihubs, Deall Sejuta Cita, as well as Finku and Sribuu were also selected to represent Indonesia in American technology startup accelerator, Y Combinator.

Startup Studio Indonesia aims to strengthen and complement the digital startup empowerment program launched by Kominfo, including the 1000 Digital Startup Movement and Hub.id. Through these programs, the Ministry targets to produce 150 digital startups by 2024 with the ability to scale in terms of user numbers, revenue, employment, and VC funding.

Startup Studio Indonesia aims to incubate 150 startups by 2024