Innovation Factory and GREE Ventures Collaboration Presents "SKALA" Acceleration Program

Innovation Factory, a community-based initiative that has BLOCK71 Jakarta as its ecosystem builder for startups in Indonesia, launched an acceleration program for startups SKALA in collaboration with venture capital firm GREE Ventures. GREE Ventures has invested in various Indonesian technology companies, such as Bukalapak, Kudo, BerryBenka, Luxola, and Pie. Later this acceleration program will focus on startups that have gained market traction and have gone through the process minimum viable product (MVP).

To DailySocial, SKALA Program Manager Agustiadi Lee revealed, the support of the Innovation Factory community and the expertise of GREE Ventures wrapped in the BLOCK71 program is expected to be an acceleration program that can help startups grow.

"These two organizations can complement each other. We share the view that there is a gap in the existing acceleration program in Indonesia so it makes sense for us to work together to build our own program, which is a program that focuses on business metrics and mentoring," said Agustiadi.

Give an initial capital of IDR 437 million

Inspired by the Y Combinator's focus and approach, specifically this acceleration program does not only look at Indonesian startups, but foreign startups that are considered to have potential and attractive business models, can register themselves to become program participants. For startups that successfully enter, SKALA will immediately invest an initial capital of USD30.000 (Rp437 million) for 5% equity.

At the end of the program, a Demo Day will be held so that startups can give presentations in front of selected investors. GREE Ventures can also choose to invest in startups that have shown great potential during the program and adhere to the GREE Ventures investment thesis.

"The agenda of both parties through SKALA is to develop the startup ecosystem in the country. We want to find and guide quality startup founders who have great products but have difficulties in business development," said Agustiadi.

Built Category

Regarding the startup category that SKALA is targeting, Agustiadi emphasized that this program is open to all startups. However, currently SKALA focuses on startups targeting the fields of agritech, logistics, healthtech, edtech, O2O, media, and fintech.

"We are also open to international startups as long as they have solutions to solve basic problems in Indonesia. Ideally, startups that have a deep understanding of problems in Indonesia and have a solid team," said Agustiadi.

Other partners involved in this program are Director of Innovation Factory and CEO of PopBox Adrian Lim, Head of Startup Ecosystem AWS Indonesia Budiman Wikarsa, Investment Manager of GREE Ventures Samir Chaibi, and Principal GREE Ventures Nikhil Kapur.

"Most accelerators focus on collecting startups, then just helping them find venture capital. We believe that if you build your company the right way in a sizable market, the capital will come naturally. We also looked around us and saw that no other program did that. This is in Indonesia, so we decided to collaborate on our own project," said Nikhil.