Gojek and Bukalapak: The origin story

Dear readers,

Southeast Asia’s tech scene is maturing, and this could be a year when many of the region’s largest internet companies offer their shares to the public.

It wasn’t too long ago, however, when Indonesian heavyweights Gojek and Bukalapak were struggling, just like any other startup.

Gojek’s co-founders / Photo credit: Gojek

In our top story last week, we recapped how these two companies found the initial spark that set them up for success. (It’s also fun to look at their old photos.)

We also studied how after doing some groundwork, a founder decided that his idea wasn’t worth pursuing. Sometimes, there’s more we can learn from startups that didn’t take off.

Here are other stories we did last week:

• Robotics cafe startup Ratio nets $10m in series A round led by Frasers Property
• Does the dawn of in-house ecommerce delivery threaten third-party logistics firms?
• Super apps in India: How do the competitors stack up?
• Going public may boost Grab, Gojek valuations by billions
• How CXA’s big SaaS bet paid off during Covid-19
• Trending in Asia: Wireless charging, a management framework, and a new breed of smart devices

One story I’d like to highlight is about a Twitter war in India over Cred, an $800 million fintech startup.

The war of words touched on how old accounting norms supposedly don’t apply to startups and whether startups should disclose their numbers to the media.

What caught my attention, though, was the discussion on journalism ethics.

Questions ought to be raised about the Entrackr piece that sparked the firestorm.

It isn’t apparent if Entrackr reached out to Cred for comment. The story doesn’t give any indication, and the publication didn’t respond to Tech in Asia’s requests for comment.

Why journalists should be careful

The article, in my opinion, used some biased language. It spoke of “mind-boggling losses” and Cred’s “abysmal” margin, even though it’s hard to tell what the true state of the company is from the financial statement alone.