Speed Dating Can Be a Startup Driver to Unite Investment Companies

So far, the speed dating method is often used to unite investment companies or commonly known as venture capital (VC) with startup companies. This method is also used by the independent Nexticorn foundation at the 2019 Nexticorn International Summit for two days.

Young men and women gather in the Jimbaran Hub area, Bali. Each of them greeted each other, starting a conversation until a long chat. After 20 minutes have passed, each person exchanged ‘pairs’ to start a different story.

The ‘Quick Dating’ method is used by young men and women to convey their ideas, visions, and missions. This is done not to unite two people in a marriage, but rather to the two companies they represent to establish cooperation as funders and recipients of funds.

NextICorn’s chairman, Daniel Tumiwa, has ambitions to realize a minimum of 1,500 meetings between 103 companies and 169 investors who will participate in the event. Thus, this will further increase the potential for business agreements to occur in the future.

Speed ​​Dating in Bali Followed by 169 Ventura Capital

There are 169 VCs. 63 percent of VCs come from abroad, while 37 percent of the country. A series of investors who attended the Speed ​​Dating event held in the Jimbaran Hub area, Bali included:

1. BRI Ventures, and

BRI Ventures is a subsidiary of BRI which was acquired from PT Bahana Artha Ventura in 2018. This state-owned bank entered by taking over 97.61% of shares.

2. Salim Group

The Salim Group is a conglomerate company that was founded on October 4, 1972 in Indonesia. This company was founded by Sudono Salim. The company has several subsidiaries, including Indofood, the world’s largest producer of instant noodles and Bogasari, the largest flour operating company.

Meanwhile, several companies that participated in this event included Logisly, PrivyID, Kata.ai, KoinWorks, Snapcart, and Kulina. Daniel revealed that this event was like a speed dating exchange that showcased each other’s material and hoped to experience compatibility with each other.

In the process, not only companies show off their potential, but investors also show off competing with other competitors to attract potential companies.

Every investor has different tastes. They will show the character of funding. Not only companies will launch, but investors also offer to be chosen. Chairman of Nexticorn from the Board of Trustees, Rudiantara, has ambitions to encourage the emergence of three new unicorns by 2020.

Speed ​​Dating is Still Focusing on Fin-Tech Companies

Daniel said that this year there was a lot of increased demand from investors for companies in the financial technology-based (fin-tech) category, health, agriculture, and education. “We predict that the high technology industry, health technology, agricultural technology, information technology, logistics, and e-sports will be the main focus of investors.”

This event is not to make more companies, but to help those who have a solid business model and structure to advance to Unicorn. For this reason, Nexticorn and Ernst and Young Indonesia formulated a comprehensive standard in managing participating companies.

In terms of funding, around 20 percent of 103 companies have received less than USD 1 million. Meanwhile, 55 percent have received funds of USD 1 million to USD 5 million. Then, 25 percent of them have received above USD 5 million.

On the other hand, curating companies by referring to several criteria, including companies in the form of limited companies (PT) or foreign investment (PMA) with minimum local capital ownership of 25 percent. Technology companies have at least obtained an investment of USD 100 thousand from external investors.If it is still funded by the founder, the novice media category has a minimum of 5 million active monthly users. For e-commerce startup, the minimum transaction value is more than USD 1 million. For Software as a Service (SaaS), it is USD 500 thousand