“Yogyakarta’s strength lies in its creativity, and this creativity is the driving force of the development of startup companies,” as stated by Arief Hidayat, the Head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), on The Asia Entrepreneurship Training Programme on Monday (7/2).
Attended by tens of CEOs of startup companies from all over Indonesia, this event was held under the cooperation between Fisipol Creative Hub and UMG Idealab. Located in the Auditorium at the 4th floor of Fisipol UGM, this programme featured Max Weber (AETP Programme Manager), Kiwi Aliwarga (CEO and Founder of UMG Group), Aditya Nugraha (Operation Manager of IDX Incubator) and Neil El Himam (Infrastructure Director for Information and Communications Technology of the Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy) as guest speakers.
At this event, Arief stated that in addition to creativity, the participation of educational institutions is also essential to improve startup companies in Yogyakarta. Therefore, a good environment for startups in Yogyakarta, and ultimately, in Indonesia, is needed.
According to Google VC Outlook, the total amount of investments in Indonesia has increased by 64 times in the past 5 years. Indonesia also has the largest digital population in ASEAN and the fifth largest in the world.
According to Neil, the development of startups in Indonesia is still haunted by several challenges. The first challenge is Indonesia’s vast territory that consists of 17,504 islands. Another challenge is the quality and quantity of Indonesia’s human resources that are considered inadequate. The lack of information and communications technology infrastructure in rural areas is also an additional obstacle.
This event was held to connect the CEOs of startup companies and shareholders. Luthfi, the coordinator of the event, explained that this program is a cooperation between UMG Idealab and ETH Zurich.
ETH Zurich is looking for 10 startups from Indonesia, that later on will be incubated for 5 months in Indonesia and 1 month in Switzerland. While in Indonesia, the selected startups will receive intensive incubation before departing to Switzerland.
Luthfi stated that Yogyakarta was selected as the host of this event due to its high number of potential startups yet is relatively unheard of by major investors.