Leading startups Indonesia 2024, by funding amount

As of January 2024, Akulaku, a growing banking and digital finance platform in Southeast Asia, was Indonesia's leading startup based on its total funding amount in the past two years. The startup had a total funding amount of around 310 million U.S. dollars. The growth of startups and venture capital financing in Indonesia are tightly linked. In 2022, the value of venture capital funding in Indonesia amounted to over 3.6 billion U.S. dollars.

The rise of Indonesian startups

Having the largest market size in Southeast Asia, Indonesia benefits from its predominantly young, internet-savvy workforce, enabling the creation of notable startups and unicorns for its own domestic economy. While most Indonesian startups are digital startups, their unicorn companies span a range of industries, from logistics, travel and ticketing, to financial technology services.

Indonesia has eight unicorns and two decacorns: GoTo Group and J&T Express, and GoTo Group launched their initial public offering (IPO) in 2022. The first five Indonesian e-commerce platforms to attain unicorn status, Gojek, Tokopedia, Traveloka, Bukalapak, and OVO, did so before the pandemic hit the country between 2016 and 2019. In 2021, Gojek and Tokopedia merged to create GoTo Group. Not long after the merger, GoTo announced the sale of 75 percent of Tokopedia's shares to TikTok in December 2023.

Leading startups in Indonesia are currently facing difficulties

In 2021, Bukalapak became the country’s first unicorn to be listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX). However, it was reported that Bukalapak.com has lost more than half its value since raising 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in Indonesia's highest public offering. GoTo Group, one of Indonesia’s decacorns, also faced difficulties in 2022 after its IPO on the IDX in 2021. Due to the unfavorable macroeconomic conditions, GoTo Group had to lay off 1,300 people, or about 12 percent of its total employees in November 2022 to cut expenses and improve their finances.