Between the years 2011 and 2013 Indonesia’s cement industry seemed to be a goldmine. Double-digit growth in annual domestic cement sales – supported by strong growth in the country’s property sector, particularly on the islands of Java and Sumatra – attracted new foreign investment in cement production facilities, while established cement producers in the Archipelago invested in expansion of their cement production facilities.

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E-commerce – which refers to the activity of electronically buying (or selling) products through online services or over the Internet – has been developing rapidly in Indonesia over the past decade. More and more Indonesians have started to shop online, forcing many offline retail players to adapt and innovate their business models in order to survive in this new and challenging environment where two newcomers, both tech startups and both e-commerce platforms, have developed into a unicorn (Tokopedia and Bukalapak) which is a startup that is valued above USD $1 billion.

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The Indonesian government, investors and (other) market participants are optimistic that Indonesia’s tech startup company ecosystem is becoming stronger and stronger, and thus allows for the blossoming of more tech startups.

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One characteristic of the Indonesian economy is that the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in this USD $1.0 trillion economy. They not only play an important role because some of them rank among Indonesia’s biggest companies (in terms of profit, sales and assets), thereby generating plenty of money for the government (in the form of tax revenue or dividend) while at the same time creating jobs for millions of Indonesians.

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