Tokopedia: the founding story of Indonesia’s new ecommerce giant (#StartupAsia preview)

William Tanuwijaya, CEO of Tokopedia.

If you’re plying your trade in the tech startup industry in Indonesia, you’ll be pretty optimistic nowadays. The country has just been rocked with news of two venture giants coughing up US$100 million in fresh cash for Tokopedia, the leading online marketplace site. That is arguably the biggest publicized funding amount for a Southeast Asian startup.

Softbank and Sequoia Capital are the two big names that believe not only on Tokopedia but also in the Indonesian market. These two investor firms seem to know what they’re doing, as both of them have had great successes in the industry, backing the likes of Alibaba, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn.

Whenever Softbank and Sequoia make big moves, the world notices. As a result, many more investors and global companies might pay more attention to the Indonesian startup market. And this in turn gives greater scope for local startups to showcase their products to the world. More entrepreneurs in Indonesia now dare to dream big.

See: How Indonesia’s Tokopedia can become the next Alibaba

The man in the spotlight is Tokopedia’s co-founder and CEO William Tanuwijaya. Unlike some of his tech peers, Tanuwijaya did not go to an Ivy League school, nor does he have a wealthy family that helped kickstart his startup empire. Although Tanuwijaya had the dream to built Tokopedia back in 2007, he had to wait a couple of years until he could gather the capital to do so. He also needed to provide for his family, so risking it all on a business that needs so much cash didn’t make sense.

At the time the marketplace was founded, there were no incubators or a support network for Indonesian startups, and so Tanuwijaya made his fundraising pitches to numerous traditional companies that did not fully understand about the internet business. Even worse, there were no success stories in the local internet industry, which made it tough for any tech entrepreneur to break out.

And when Tanuwijaya finally managed to raise the funds he needed to launch the business with his partner Leontinus Alpha Edison, they still had to overcome many obstacles – and also tough competition with serious backers like Telkom-eBay’s Plasa.com, Rakuten, and Naspers’ Multiply. And still Tokopedia persevered while two of the aforementioned competitors weren’t looking too healthy.

How does a local boy achieve all that? What hell did he go through to get to where he is today?

Tanuwijaya is one of our esteemed speakers at Startup Asia Jakarta 2014. He will be sharing his story of how he started Tokopedia and steered through the hurdles and challenges of the past five years. Of course, we will also touch on questions about how all that money will be used and what he feels about the opportunities that still lie untouched in Indonesia.

This is definitely one of those key events you won’t want to miss if you’re looking to get a deeper understanding of the Indonesian market. Join us at Startup Asia Jakarta on November 26 and 27. You can use ILOVE15 for a 15 percent discount when registering. The code is valid until October 31 (that’s today!), so sign up now.