The World is Blinking to Indonesia: In the Midst of Early Internet Boom

BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), a term coined by Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs now has to add the new ‘i’, to become BRICi, which stands for Indonesia. Quoting William Pesek from Bloomberg, ”China, India and Indonesia already generate economic activity equal to 44% of the US economy.”

Indonesia caught the Internet world off-guard, to become the number two countries in the world to adopt Facebook. A study by Comscore shows that Indonesia reported the highest penetration, with 20.8 percent of Internet users in the country visiting Twitter.com. Koprol acquisition by Yahoo has really put Indonesia on the map. By establishing a local office in Jakarta, Yahoo committed to build local content to cater Indonesia growing Internet users. Koprol successfully grows their users 10 times from 50 K to 500 K in just 6 months after the acquisition. The services soon will be launched to other countries.

Tiger Global, IDG Ventures and Naspers, all the Internet investor giants has been looking into Indonesia market recently. They are interested in Indonesian Internet, mobile and gaming industry. Tiger Global, the early investor of Detik, consider the site ready for IPO in a few years. They are looking for growth. Within 5 years, a company that double every year will become 32 times its size today. Early Internet player like Kaskus and Bhinneka are still the hottest candidate. Expect a surprising news soon.

Nusantara ventures founded as part of Bakrie group to invest in Indonesia Internet startup with Vivanews as its first venture. East Ventures acquires some shares in Tokopedia.com and Urbanesia.com. Unofficial information indicates a key figure from Djarum involves with various startups such as Krazymarket.com, Lintasberita.com, Dailysocial.net after previously put a stake in Semutapi Colony, an integrated communication agency and MediaX, a digital publisher manager company.

I am witnessing something intriguing, we are in the midst of early Internet boom. The world is blinking to Indonesia! What an opportunity in a lifetime...