The startups will continue to receive support until they secure a deal from investor, while Plug and Play Indonesia prepares for its second batch

Silicon Valley-based accelerator Plug and Play Indonesia hosted a Demo Day event for the nine startups that have made it into the programme in Jakarta. Attending the event were Plug and Play Indonesia President Director Wesley Harjono, Plug and Play APAC Managing Partner Jupe Tan, and Plug and Play Indonesia Accelerator Director Nayoko Wicaksono.

“The 11 startups that had been selected went through a process that shortlisted them to nine startups, which are set to join Plug and Play Indonesia. For the next steps, we will continue on guiding and supporting the nine startups until they secure deal from investors,” Tan said.

The nine startups that have made it to Demo Day stage have successfully beaten 400 applicants at the early stage of the selection process. The startups offer different kinds of services, from transportation, financial technology (fintech), agriculture, edutech, to human resource. The startups have the opportunity to collaborate with corporations and receive US$50,000 early stage funding.

“In this first batch we opened registration for startups in the general category, but through the first batch we were able to see the kind of startups that we will focus on the second batch of Plug and Play Indonesia,” Harjono said.

For 14 weeks, the startups have received support from Plug and Play Indonesia, from mentorship to a meeting with regulators to help smoothen their business model.

The nine startups that have made it to the acceleration programme and have the opportunity to promote its business during the Demo Day are Dana Didik, KYCK, Otospector, Bustiket, Karta, Sayurbox, Brankas, Astronaut, and Wonderworx.

Also Read: Plug and Play Indonesia announces 11 startups in the first batch of its accelerator programme

On founders’ lack of education and skills

 

The event was also attended by Plug and Play Indonesia mentor Sukan Makmuri, CTO of PT Kudo Teknologi Indonesia (Kudo). While working as a mentor, Makmuri noticed that the lack of skills and abilities among Indonesian startup founders. According to Makmuri, this might be the leading factor why the country is yet to see an outstanding and sustainable new startup.

“Business capital is not our only concern at Plug and Play Indonesia; we are also concerned about the founders’ skills and abilities, which we found are still lacking.”

He added that ideally, a good founder should be able to compromise and refrain from seeing his own business ideas as absolute.

“It’s important for founders to have a good resilience, and be smart enough in determining the right time to launch a startup with such kind of services and products. Timing is everything in startup world,” Makmuri said.

Apart from timing, according to Harjono, having a product that can provide the best solution to the society is also the determining factor in the success of a startup. This is the reason why Plug and Play Indonesia performed a curation process to decide the startups that are able to give the best solutions.

“If they have a clear business model and are able to solve existing problems, we are going to help them meet regulators and bridge the service that they provide,” Harjono said.

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The article Plug and Play Indonesia Gelar “Demo Day” 9 Startup Batch Pertama was written by Yenny Yusra and first appeared in DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

The post Plug and Play Indonesia hosts demo day for 9 startups in its inaugural batch appeared first on e27.