Startup Report 2023 Highlights M&A Action in Tech Winter

Indonesia's digital ecosystem is trying to remain resilient amidst the technological winter storm (tech winter) for the last two years. Strategy exit Through M&A is a choice that is often taken amidst market uncertainty and drying up of funding supplies.

Based on Startup Report 2023 data, there were a total of 25 M&A actions announced throughout 2023, a slight decrease from 32 M&A in the previous year. M&A allows startups to gain access to resources to continue operating and expand their markets.

Sector fintech quite a lot to enliven this corporate action, starting from the P2P sub-vertical lending, embedded finance, to wealthtech. Meanwhile, IDN Media has made two acquisitions in a year, namely Boss Creator and Saweria, to diversify its content business.

Strategic partnership between GoTo and ByteDance closed the end of the year with a pivotal transaction agreement for the industry E-commerce Indonesia. The agreement in question is to combine Tokopedia and TikTok Shop after TikTok Shop had stopped operating for regulatory reasons.

Nevertheless, strategy exit Since none of the IPOs were realized last year, investors chose to be careful while waiting for the market to improve. Akseleran, which scheduled an IPO in mid-2023, decided to postpone it until 2024. Digiasia Bios has just obtained approval for an acquisition with a SPAC company before going public on the US stock exchange.

Meanwhile, three digital companies that have previously IPOed, namely GoTo, Blibli, and Bukalapak are pursuing profit realization by the end of 2023. As of Q3 2023, GoTo was recorded as still making a loss of IDR 9,5 trillion, although it shrank significantly from a loss of IDR 40 trillion throughout 2022.

"Money is no longer cheap and there is the specter of rising interest rates. Many investors are responding to this situation by recalibrating their strategies, shifting from riskier assets to safer assets, such as deposits and fixed income. This shift is more than just a market adjustment , reflects a major change in investor expectations," said Markus Liman Rahardja, Chief Investment Officer of BRI Ventures in the report.

As an introduction, the 2023 Startup Report was published DSInnovate, is an annual report that summarizes the landscape of Indonesia's digital ecosystem over the past year, from startup funding to trends for 2024.

More details can be downloaded via this link.