6 Things About Building Regional Innovation Through the Acceleration Program

In the past decade, the startup industry has contributed to the growth of Indonesia's digital economy. Moreover, the existence of this startup has boosted its innovation competitiveness in Southeast Asia. It is noted that Indonesia is one of the countries with unicorn the most in this area.

Some unicorn The company has now even formed an incubation and acceleration program to encourage the growth of innovation, not only for the country itself, but also for the region.

One of them Grab Ventures through the program Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV) which is present for the Indonesian market. What about experiences and challenges Grab Ventures in building innovation in the region? Check out the full #TuesdayStartup session this time with the Director of Grab Aditi Sharma Ventures.

Localization as a strategy for each country approach

Aditi assessed that localization is an important strategy for programs such as GVV to start the development of innovation in a country. This should be underlined considering the needs and gap among people in each country is different. At GVV, each destination market has a very targeted and specific.

"For example, GVV focuses on [startups] in the growth, and we see this for the Indonesian market. There are some potential partners here, where we can do something like partnership test while the program is running. They have a chance to be commercial partners forward. For us, this program well-suited for the Indonesian ecosystem," he explained.

The conditions are certainly different when compared to other countries. Take Vietnam for example. According to Aditi's experience, Grab Ventures need to do ground work in the country, such as building ecosystems and capabilities founder the strong one.

"The needs are different. Hence, the name of the program there is Grab Ignite Ventures targeting startups early stage. The model is more capability-centric. We make the program more contextual according to the needs of the country," Aditi added.

Not the target market, but the goal

In addition to localization, it is important for Aditi to determine program objectives. That is, as long as it has a significant impact on the ecosystem, it doesn't matter that the program must be implemented in every target country of destination.

"We continue to explore opportunities for cooperation in the startup industry. However, we are not just making programs in each country. We will see if there is a need to launch this program, which countries can have a positive impact on the ecosystem," he explained.

Looking for a target market that creates a trend

There is a reason why Indonesia is often the main target of investment. In addition to the large market, Indonesia is considered to have its own market trends. In fact, according to Aditi, this is a strong reason why the GVV program was opened for the first time for the Indonesian market.

He said as much as 60 percent of digital investment in Southeast Asia 'flew' to Indonesia. According to him, the data shows that the development of innovation in Indonesia is an interesting trend.

Another trend is the development of digital adoption in Indonesia, which is also contributed by the SME segment. So far, the SME segment has been one of the pillars of the Indonesian economy. Noted, there are more than 50 million SMEs here.

"SMEs are a great opportunity for innovation growth. Especially in a pandemic situation, they are required to adopt digital. This is a trend that makes the Indonesian market attractive," said Aditi.

New adaptation is a challenge

In his journey, Aditi has met and worked with many founder through the initiated program Grab the. There are a number of challenges that he considers as a learning process.

One of them is adapting to founder in order to work together. "We saw that time founder don't believe what it means working with venture capital and teams exploring new business models, like us," said Aditi.

He considered that this could be a lesson to understand each other's desires and find potential startup partners. "Feedback what we get when we work together founder is allocating a lot of time to get to know each other," he said.

Pivot in a pandemic situation

During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a very significant change in consumer behavior and needs. This situation also requires business people to accelerate digitalization.

On the other hand, a number of business sectors were positively affected by this health crisis, such as health and basic needs. For Aditi, this indicates that Indonesia continues to strive to encourage the growth of the business sector, both B2B and B2C.

"Therefore, it is important to see the need customer in the midst of the current changing situation. In the case of GVV batch 3rd, we finally did pivot with a focus on digitization opportunities in the SME sector. Now all about digital solutions to create services Grab being flexible in the pandemic era. Here we can help them adopt digital technology," he said.

Regarding startup criteria and KPIs

The criteria become the general standard in finding potential partners. In acceleration programs such as GVV, Aditi emphasized strategic feeds suitable for the desired purpose. Especially, if the startup candeliver this goal at the right time.

"We look at these kind of criteria, like how strong the commitment is founder, chemistry with founder, or whether they want to support the SME ecosystem. This is what we call that we share the same goal," said Aditi.

In addition, the incubation program also has KPIs to ensure that the startups invited to work together carry out the same mission as the company's mission. "For us, the key metric is whether the team can create a business model and bring tech leader. Of course this program is always evaluated."

-

Disclosure: DailySocial is a strategic partner Grab Ventures Velocity