Indonesia-based venture capital firm Alpha JWC Ventures and Pijar Foundation launched an accelerator programme on Tuesday focused on artificial intelligence (AI), as part of efforts to connect AI technologies with real-world applications.
Dubbed the Artificial Intelligence Institute for Progress (AIIP), the programme has an equity-free approach, which means the curated participants are completely free of charge but both Alpha JWC and Pijar will not invest in the startups either.
According to a statement, the programme has garnered support from ByteDance-backed Tokopedia and Amazon Web Services with a combined commitment of close to $2 million encompassing technology and platform access, usage, and financial support to benefit the programme.
Jefrey Joe, general partner of Alpha JWC Ventures, said Indonesia needs to accelerate AI adoption to tap into its many potentials. Given that AI adoption remains in its infancy in Indonesia, Joe said there is plenty of room for innovation and progress.
“As an industry player, we try to bring everyone together,” Joe told DealStreetAsia on the sidelines of the launching event, commenting on the VC’s role in the programme.
“Because we have a global network, we become [the startups’] bridge to the world. We introduce them not only to companies, but also to experts, mentors, and global investors. There are not many AI-focused investors in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. That’s why we bring in guest speakers from Europe and the US to talk about their investments, how they value the company, revenue, challenges, and how they add value,” Joe said.
After two months of deliberations, AIIP has chosen 17 startups for its first batch. The 18-week programme, which will be divided into the so-called Playground and Sandbox, will conclude with Demo Days in December.
For the Sandbox programme, AIIP invites startups that already have AI products to be matched with local businesses and to introduce them to potential customers. The startups in this category are AvataraLabs, Fintelite, Harrison.AI, Lunash, Mosaic, StorySage.io, Unravel Carbon, and Whale Tech.
While seen as an inevitable future with much excitement for businesses in Indonesia to adopt AI, data suggest there are still a limited number of investments in the sector.
Compared with Singapore, investments in data analytics, AI, and machine learning-related startups in Indonesia have been relatively limited.
There were 19 investments into such startups in Indonesia between 2019 and 2024, compared with 100 investments in Singapore.
In value, as much as $144.3 million has been invested into data analytics startups in Indonesia in 2019-2024, compared with a total of $1.6 billion in the same period in Singapore.
