Init-6 Provides Initial Funding of 72 Billion Rupiah to IDCloudHost

An investment company founded by Bukalapak Co-founder Achmad Zaky, init-6, has just announced its latest funding of $5 million or around IDR72 billion to IDCloudHost, a service provider cloud and data center local.

In a virtual presentation to the media, Zaky revealed that IDCloudHost is his 11th portfolio after the venture capital company was founded in April 2020.

"Since its establishment a year ago, we have observed as many as three thousand [startup] companies in Indonesia. We invested in IDCloudHost because we saw the market cloud is growing rapidly. The products they offer are also suitable to be expanded to the Southeast Asian market," he said.

Moreover, the digitization of SMEs increased rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic, so now is the right moment to encourage the use of cloud. IDCloudHost is also targeting the SME market segment which is currently still the pillar of the economy in Indonesia.

For your information, Init-6 was established after Zaky resigned from his position as CEO of Bukalapak. Apart from Zaky, Bukalapak Co-Founder Nugroho Herucahyono also joined as a Partner at Init-6 after leaving his position as CTO. Init-6 aims to invest in early stage, where platform EdTech Education the first portfolio.

Expansion to Southeast Asia

This is the first funding IDCloudHost has received for five years. Previously, the company relied on bootstrapped to develop business.

IDCloudHost CEO Alfian Pamungkas Sakawiguna revealed, this funding will be used for market expansion to Southeast Asia this year. With this target, his party is aiming for as many as one million service users next year.

Currently, IDCloudHost has served 100 thousand customers, 350 thousand requests, and has 5 data center in Indonesia.

"We will continue to increase capacity data center in line with our expansion into Southeast Asia. We are already here data center in Singapore. In the future, we hope that there will be an increase of up to ten times that of SMEs using cloud," he said.

Happen Web Hosting local cloud-based computing is indeed quite boisterous competition. Besides IDCloudHost there are dozens of provider others, for example in the micro-medium segment there are Niagahoster, IDWebHost, Masterweb, Exabytes and so on. Meanwhile, in the upper-medium segment, there are players such as Biznet Gio, Telkom Sigma, and others.

Not to mention the presence of outside players who are starting to mature their business and build data centers in Indonesia, such as Amazon Web Services, Alibaba Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. In addition to the level of reliability and affordability, value proposition from each service provider should be a priority in the business strategy to be able to attract wider market interest.

Init-6 investment target in 2021

Furthermore, Zaki revealed that his party will continue to add new portfolios this year with a bottom up. No specific targets are targeted, but Init-6 remains committed to entering a number of business verticals, such as cloud, EdTechand fintech.

"Last year we targeted [closing] 20 portfolios, but only reached ten. So indeed the investment target cannot be forced, maybe also because last year the pandemic started. This year could be even more because we are more agnostic. There are many interesting sectors, fintech for example. Although there is no portfolio there yet, I think the future is good."