Indosat’s Ideabox startup incubator wins GTB’s Global Innovation Award

Ideabox, a premium startup accelerator set-up by Indosat and Mountain SEA Ventures in Indonesia has won the 2014 consumer innovation services award from Global Telecom Businesses.

“In less than a year, Ideabox has become one top of technology incubators in Indonesia,” said Prashant Gokarn, Chief Strategy & Planning Officer at Indosat “ We have leveraged our strategic partnerships with global innovation and incubation players to bring expertise and strength to empower startups. We have a very rigid selection process and focus on quality and scalability. In addition to money and world class mentoring, we provide the successful startups priority access to Indosat’s infrastructure and customers, which significantly reduces the time needed by them to get scale and brand recognition.”

Indosat has partnered with Mountain SEA Ventures, a part of Mountain Partners AG, a global venture capital group and startup creator with portfolio of over 200 investments around the world, and the Founder Institute, world’s largest technology accelerator network to run the incubator. The incubator also has the backing of the Ooredoo Group, Indosat’s parent company with presence in 18 countries, to help some of the companies reach global scale if they find success in Indonesia. The incubator gets support and mentorship from many global players such as Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm Development Network, Amazon Web Service, Yahoo Indonesia and Cisco.

“We’re very grateful to receive an international recognition for Ideabox,”, said Alexander Rusli, Indosat’s CEO and President Director.” It is a key part of Indosat’s mission to build a strong digital services ecosystem in Indonesia and nurture promising Indonesian entrepreneurs to achieve local and global scale.”

Andi Zain, Managing Partner Mountain SEA Ventures said “Collaboration with each industry stakeholders is crucial for success of a startup, especially since our tech industry still in each infancy. There’s lot of great talents from Indonesia and we do have big market potential. A good accelerator and incubator program need to be able to bridge these great talents with good mentors, effective curriculum, networking opportunities & open up the door to the industry. We are glad the partnership with Indosat complement this, not only by funding but also access to the vast customer base”.

In its pilot cycle, Ideabox selected 4 startups out of 100 applicants and accelerated them over a 4 month in dedicated facilities. The companies include Dealoka, an innovative mobile coupon application, Ngomik, a digital comics platform, Shoop!, a hyper social ecommerce platform and Unyu a sticker based communication service for feature phones.

All companies have successfully completed the incubation program and one company is already in advanced discussions with an international investor. All companies are working closely with Indosat’s Digital Services Unit to launch their products bundled with Indosat’s products.

Brian Arfi, CEO & Founder of Shoop! said “Ideabox truly is one of the best incubator in Indonesia and was a very memorable experience for my team. To be successful, a startup not only needs money and a great product, but also mentoring and strong commercial partnerships to scale commercially and operationally. We not only learned how to build a world-class start-up but also find and engage the right investors and commercial partners. We had access to both local and international mentors throughout the program. Many startups in Indonesia fail because they just seek money and don’t have access to international exposure, best practices and mentoring.”

Ideabox is planning its first investor’s day in June. It will start the next batch in September 2014 and also plans on attracting some international startups to locate in Indonesia.

More information on ideabox and its program can be found at www.ideabox.co.id and on Indosat’s digital services initiatives at www.indosat.com/digital.

About Ideabox

Ideabox is a tech business incubator powered by Indosat in partnership with Kejora and supported by Ooredoo Group.We focus our investments on early stage startups related to telecommunication, media and technology sectors.We run 120 days acceleration program to bring startups from ideas to awesome product.