At the height of the buzz around the eight venture capitalists and incubators forming Alliance for Venture Capitals (AVCII) in Indonesia last week, technology and startup blog e27 posted a report that the alliance may have just been a group of individuals on a lunch date. Ideosource and Ideoworks Andi Boediman, whose company was one of the eight who supposedly founded AVCII, posted an intriguing blog entry today.
"Chill out friends, this is just a casual lunch and no agenda to change the world.....yet," the blog entry said.
Ideoworks is a local e-commerce agency based in Indonesia. It has recently partnered with online retailer Shopify to provide the latter access and potential market to the largest Muslim country worldwide.
A press release was sent to the local tech startup media about Cyber Agent Ventures, Mountain Indonesia, Merah Putih Incubator, Ideosource, GEPI, East Ventures, Jakarta Founders Institute and Grupara Inc had met to form AVCII. The formation of a group was to have an official representation to create and implement policies to benefit the local internet startup and venture capital community. It is to note that the Secretary General of Indonesia's Ministry of Trade had expressed an interest to forbid e-commerce business to receive or be owned by foreigners.
On a positive note, e27 contacted participants in the AVCII meeting to confirm insinuations from Boediman's post. Participants from the lunch meeting whose names were not disclosed, unanimously said that although there was no alliance in paper yet, the participants would continue to discuss proposals to ensure a healthy and thriving business environment for startups, venture capitalist and incubators.
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