JAKARTA: Most artificial intelligence (AI) development is happening elsewhere for now, but investors in Indonesia and abroad are ready to pounce on the cutting-edge technology it promises to unlock in South-East Asia’s largest economy.
The country’s macroeconomic trends, coupled with a relatively young and increasingly tech-savvy population, are seen as creating endless opportunities for homegrown startups to adopt as well as advance AI.
The use of AI is growing each day, and, according to a study conducted by US-based management consulting firm Kearney, AI could contribute US$1 trillion (RM4.6 trillion) to the Asean economy by 2030.
Local and regional venture capital firms (VCs) interviewed by The Jakarta Post are enthusiastic about AI supercharging business activity in Indonesia.
“With the right business model and products, AI solutions can definitely be good investment opportunities,” said Edward Ismawan Chamdani, managing partner at VC outfits Gayo Capital and Ideosource. “There will definitely be money coming in from AI projects.”
He added that, while the world’s largest tech companies had been created during downturns, as new problems and inefficiencies became more apparent, “investors will always see the potential market size and whether the pie is big enough to support the growth story”.
Livinglab Ventures vice-president of investment Edmund Carulli said: “It makes sense to invest and try out new technology such as AI in Indonesia. The upside will still be far above the risk of failing.”
Openspace vice-president Tania Lestari concurred: “AI has been one of the key themes we identified as a space with huge growth potential in the next few years.”
Openspace has invested in Datature, a Singapore-based no-code end-to-end machine learning operations platform, which it believes addresses a big pain point of scarce and expensive AI talent at smaller enterprises or traditional enterprises new to AI development.
Edmund explained that venture investment played an important role in pushing AI innovation.
“More investment in this area means accelerated growth and adoption will happen sooner than later.” — The Jakarta Post/ANN