Director-General of Higher Education Plans to Make ‘Startups’ a Course

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology plans to make digital startups a compulsory subject in Higher Education starting in 2022.

Secretary of the Directorate General of Higher Education (Sesditjen Dikti), Paristiyanti Nurwardani, revealed that this will be prepared to start this year to provide startup training to lecturers who will later lead the course.

The Director-General of Higher Education in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) formed the National 1000 Startup Movement with a target of 100,000 students involved in startup development by 2022.

“Later, the team that passes the startup development selection will receive more intensive guidance so that it can last long and can enter the Kedaireka platform or campus business incubator,” Paris said in a statement, Thursday (13/5/2021).

According to him, this discourse is part of the government’s efforts to encourage the spread of more massive and quality startups in the development of the digital industry.

This Plan is in Line With the 1000 Startup Movement Program

The plan of the Directorate General of Higher Education to make this compulsory Digital Startup course is in line with the Independent Campus program and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology’s initiative to build the 1000 Startup Movement.

This movement is a forum for mentoring and empowering the world of Digital Startups in Indonesia. The 1000 Startup Digital program will be packaged in several stages from the basic level until it is ready to be tested to enter the market. There are six stages for startup founders, namely:

1. Ignition, an online seminar that provides insights from startup industry players and regulators;

2. Networking, tiered activities with other participants in their respective regions;

3. Workshop, providing technical and non-technical knowledge to build a startup from idea to launch;

4. Hacksprint, an idea brainstorming activity to become a minimum product ready for a test which will last for 3 days online and offline with coworking partners in each city;

5. Bootcamp, perform customer validation with the guidance of program mentors, UX, and business through video response; and

6. Incubation, 1-on-1 mentoring with a dedicated mentor, and acceleration of 1 main key metric for 4 weeks.

While attending the National Working Meeting of the Indonesian Young Entrepreneurs Association (HIPMI) last Friday, March 5, 2021, Minister for State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir said that Indonesia is the country with the largest number of startups or startups in the top five in the world.

Indonesia is in the fifth position behind the United States which has 66,806 startups, India 9,349 startups, UK 5,548 startups, and Canada 2,850 startups. Meanwhile, Indonesia has 2,219 startups.

Indonesian Startups Become the Target of Investors from Hong Kong

Hong Kong tycoon investment company Li Ka-shing Horizons Ventures Ltd. will make Indonesia a priority investment in the digital economy. This was revealed by Solina Chau, Li Ka-shing’s confidant.

Reporting from Bloomberg in Jakarta, Tuesday (11/5/21) the company whose initial bet was Zoom Video Communications Inc. contributed to Li’s surge in wealth during the pandemic.

Over the past year, Horizon has invested in three startups based in Indonesia in a funding round that has raised more than USD 210 million (IDR 2.9 trillion).

Partnering with one of Southeast Asia’s largest venture capitalists, Jakarta’s Alpha JWC Ventures, Horizons is working to identify young companies that could become the next most popular in the region.

This investment firm has shifted to developing countries after previously focusing on North America, Europe, and Israel. Covid-19 is driving rapid digital transformation and a burgeoning startup scene in Southeast Asia as more and more people use digital services resulting in some of the largest listings in the region.

New internet users quadrupled year-on-year in 2020 to 40 million in its six largest economies, bringing 70% of their total population online, according to an annual study by Google, Bain & Co., and Temasek Holdings Pte.