GREE Ventures Prioritize Investment in Indonesia

GREE Ventures. A Japanese venture capital company, is again targeting investment in several startups in Southeast Asia, Japan and India following the collection of a new funding round that reached $67 million (around 900 billion Rupiah). In Indonesia, GREE Ventures already has a number of portfolios, such as BerryBenka, UrbanIndo, Bukalapak, and AyoPop.

GREE Ventures Senior Investment Manager Nikhil Kapur to DealStreetAsia explains that the Indian and Southeast Asian markets in general have several things in common, such as price sensitivity, penetration mobile devices and frustration with traffic jams.

Nikhil also thinks that it would be better if startups in Southeast Asia began to see how the industry in Indonesia is and see how they develop and compete with competitors from America.

"Companies in Southeast Asia have little opportunity to build fortifications around them and create a strong barrier that can protect them once they see competitors from the United States start to look at the Southeast Asian region," said Nikhil.

Nikhil also explained that Indonesia is an important market for GREE Ventures. More than 50% of regional investment goes to Indonesian startups.

“The market [of Indonesia] is big enough and homogeneous enough [despite what people say] to build a big business that can provide venture grade returns. I don't think Thailand and Malaysia have this luxury. [..] I don't think there is yet Bubble what is happening in Southeast Asia,” said Nikhil.