The potential of Indonesia's digital economy has been questioned following the tech winter marked by waves of layoffs. However, East Ventures asserts that Indonesia's startup potential remains significant as the digital economy is still in its early stages of development.
Roderick Purwana, Managing Partner of East Ventures, cited the development of e-commerce as an example. Currently, Indonesia's e-commerce penetration stands at only 10 percent. He predicts that this penetration could grow to 15-20 percent in the near future.
"E-commerce penetration in Indonesia is currently around 10 percent. However, this figure is expected to continue growing, possibly reaching 15 or 20 percent," said Roderick during the CNBC Indonesia Economic Outlook 2024 event in Jakarta on Thursday (February 29, 2024).
Roderick shared the success story of East Ventures with Tokopedia, one of the first companies to receive funding from East Ventures 15 years ago.
At that time, Tokopedia transactions were also minimal per day. However, today, Tokopedia processes millions of transactions per day.
"One of our first investments was in Tokopedia. If we look back, the number of transactions per day at the time of our investment, almost 15 years ago, was probably in the tens per day. Today, the number of transactions is increasing significantly, reaching millions," he explained.
Despite continuous growth, he believes that offline stores will still exist. E-commerce does not entirely replace the role of offline stores.
"But will it completely replace offline stores? It seems that we haven't seen that even in advanced countries, it hasn't been able to replace the role of offline stores," he said.
Roderick explained that technological changes are inevitable and will become part of people's daily lives. However, their position will complement to improve human life within them.