Indonesia’s tech snapshot for December 2023 briefly captured items covering HR-tech in Indonesia’s construction industry, logistics software for Asia’s freight forwarders, in-person social media from Indonesia, and more.
Hit the links below to read the tech news articles behind each Indonesia headline.
Other editions: Asia’s tech news, daily (via LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter/X); and Indo-Pacific technology newsletters, weekly.
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Critical technologies in December 2023
McKinsey & Co: Technology and digital in Asia
- Indonesia: Gravel raised $14M focusing on the construction industry, making finding and hiring workers easier, helping streamline contract management, and beyond
- Indonesia: TikTok to pay $840M to acquire majority stake in Tokopedia, GoTo’s e-commerce unit, in $1.5BN bid for TikTok to re-open in the country following gov’t ban over competition worries >>>
“Given TikTok’s commitment to spend the initial US$1.5 billion ($1.99 billion) and potentially more in the future to strengthen its Indonesia operations, we expect Shopee will need to further step up spending to defend market share which will unfortunately be negative to Sea’s margins outlook and likely push out any potential profitability timing for Shopee,” the analysts add.
Mittal notes that the controlling stake in Tokopedia will remain with TikTok Shop Indonesia, taking away the negative impact to GoTo’s profitability as it will receive a steady stream of revenue from TikTok. Most of GoTo’s revenue share from the enlarged Tokopedia entity will flow directly to GoTo’s bottom-line. This allows GoTo to use its stronger financial position to grow its fintech business.
StormWall: DDoS attacks in Asia Pacific in Q3 2023
- Indonesia: Authority overseeing Nusantara, new city set to ‘replace’ current capital Jakarta, inks MOU with France’s Thales for a range of smart city initiatives
- An intro to Fr8Labs, focusing on the logistics industry with SaaS operating system and with plans for an ‘open ecosystem’ allowing participation via APIs >>>
Lai says one reason for the technology gap in Asia’s freight forwarding industry is that the market is more fragmented compared to Western countries where enterprise players dominate. Large freight forwarders are able to sway other players to digitize, especially since they have systems that the companies they work with can plug into with APIs. On the other hand, Asia’s freight forwarders are primarily SMBs and don’t have the same kind of centralized power to influence new practices. Lai adds that another reason is that digital logistics systems are created for specific markets, and don’t work in Asia because of different accounting or customs policies.
As a result, many freight forwarders in Asia, especially Southeast Asia, still use on-premise software, or a combination of Microsoft Excel, email, chat and off-the-shelf accounting systems. Lai says this makes it difficult for them to scale and also results in errors that can cost freight forwarders customs or demurrage penalties (fees charged on shipping containers that aren’t picked up on time).
- Singapore-Indonesia Jagat social network breaks 10M user target with location-based approach pushing users to make in-real-life connections and friendships
- From e27: Snapshots of the 2023 startup ecosystems in The Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand
e-Conomy SEA 2023 – Indonesia country spotlight
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