Deep Dive: Why Bukalapak’s IPO is a big deal for Indonesia

Founded in 2010, Bukalapak initially had trouble raising funds because “nobody wanted to invest,” co-founder and former CEO Achmad Zaky said during a fireside chat at the Tech in Asia Conference in 2019. He even considered closing the business after its first year, but he persevered instead and Bukalapak became a unicorn around eight years after its launch.

Bukalapak’s office / Photo credit: Bukalapak

Last week, the ecommerce player notched another milestone: It went public on the Indonesia Stock Exchange – the first unicorn to do so – boosting its valuation to approximately US$7.5 billion.

On this episode of Deep Dive, Tech in Asia’s Aditya Hadi Pratama and Simon Huang discuss the early days of Bukalapak, dive into the numbers behind its landmark initial public offering, and posit what’s in store for the company’s future.

Timecodes:

00:00 – Intro music
00:47 – Today’s topic: Bukalapak
01:40 – The origin story
04:02 – Where Bukalapak stands in the competitive Indonesian ecommerce scene
05:07 – Talk of an IPO in the US via a special purpose acquisition company
05:48 – Listing on the Indonesia Stock Exchange
08:16 – Looking at the numbers in Bukalapak’s confidential investor deck
11:32 – Surprising observations and what they tell us about Bukalapak’s future
20:12 – Why the listing is a landmark event for Indonesia’s startup scene

Download the full transcript here.

Featured reporter:

• Aditya Hadi Pratama, a Tech in Asia journalist based in Indonesia
• Simon Huang, Tech in Asia’s industry analyst based in Singapore

Essential reading:

• Bukalapak’s IPO, the largest ever on IDX, takes its valuation to $7.5b
• Visual: Bukalapak’s decade-long journey to IPO
• Bukalapak is using this deck to make its case for a $1.5b IPO
• 9 highlights from Bukalapak’s confidential investor deck
• Bukalapak’s seed round pitch deck
• How Gojek and Bukalapak found the initial spark that turned them into giants
• Mitra Bukalapak’s roadblock: Indonesia’s FMCG giants
• Being no. 2 isn’t a bad thing: Bukalapak’s Achmad Zaky
• For more stories on Bukalapak, click here

Episode sponsor:

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