Startup Communities in Indonesia [#StartupAsia Preview]

A tech ecosystem usually consists of startup founders, angel investors, VCs, government, universities, media, and communities. What often happens is that most people focus only on the entrepreneurs and the ones who invests in them — angels or venture capitals. But local communities are where all of these stakeholders meet, and there are more than a few startups being born or getting investment out of such meetups.

We have at least one strong startup community in each of the big cities across Indonesia, starting with StartupLokal in Jakarta, FOWAB in Bandung, Bancakan 2.0 and Gamelan in Jogjakarta, SuWec in Surabaya, and Stasion in Malang. They are holding regular meetups periodically to give updates about what is happening in the ecosystem and quite often they have a session to showcase newest product launches.

We will have five initiators from these communities talking on stage on the first day of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012:

1. StartupLokal

StartupLokal community is a community that based in Jakarta which acts as a melting pot, gathering start-up founders, digital industry enthusiasts, investors, and media, giving them a chance to collaborate in one way or another. This community started in April 2010 and has been growing since then. The StartupLokal community held Jakarta-based regular monthly meetups, in total 25 up until this month. It also has launched Project Eden, a startup incubator/accelerator aiming to provide pre-seed investment.

2. Bancakan

Founded back in February 2010, Bancakan is a gathering for all Jogjakarta startups and developers. They have already held more than nine meet-ups to date. It also manages Hackerspace YK, inspired by Bandung’s Hackerspace by FOWAB. Bancakan is Javanese term referring to ‘gathering’ or ‘eating together’

3. FOWAB

Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s third largest populated city, is well-known as a creative city. It is also a high-tech city, as Insitut Teknologi Bandung, arguably Indonesia’s finest technological campus, is there. It’s not surprising to know there’s a creative tech community in Bandung too. FOWAB is community for creative people who get connected through the Internet in Bandung, so in a sense FOWAB is not exclusively for IT startup people only. FOWAB is for everyone from the creative industry who has the same vision to make Indonesia a better country and a better place to live. Since its first meetup in February 2010, FOWAB has held eight events. It has also created shared workspaces for creative workers named Hackerspace Bandung. It has held Geek Fest, a SXSW-like conference at the end of March 2012 and plans to make it an annual event.

4. Stasion

Stasion is a Malang, East Java-based local startup community that aims to build synergies among the members who work in digital business and technology. Founded in March of 2011, they have so far held four meet-ups and three public workshops. ‘Singo Edan’ is the term often referred to Arema FC, Malang’s beloved football club. Lately Malang is making a name for its developers after some hackathon/developer days that have been held there.

5. SuWec

Surabaya, East Java, is Indonesia’s second most populated city after Jakarta. So it’s expected that this city will have several tech communities as well. SuWec is a community for web industry practitioners folks in Surabaya. It helps and connects like minded people to collaborate and work together. Since its founding in September of 2009, SuWec has been a regular monthly event.