Indonesia-backed, government-owned telecommunications firm Telkom Indonesia has provided $500m for a technology investment fund to be run by its corporate venturing subsidiary, MDI Ventures, DealStreetAsia reported today.
MDI Ventures was originally founded in 2014 and officially launched two years later with $100m in capital to be deployed over a four-year period.
The unit invests in digital advertising and payment technology, cloud computing and big data, mobile apps and e-commerce, the internet of things and technologies that can influence the future of communications, offering access to Telkom companies along with capital.
The new fund will provide $5m to $30m for late-stage companies located in Indonesia. They will get the chance to collaborate not only with Telkom but with other state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which will get the chance to leverage their technologies to build a digital ecosystem.
The establishment of the fund comes after Donald Wihardja joined MDI Ventures as chief executive in May this year. He said in a statement: “To maintain their strong foothold in the market well into the future, our SOEs know they need to embrace digital business models more profoundly than ever before.
“By allocating this fund in accordance with the government’s bold mission and by partnering with local tech innovators, Indonesia’s SOEs will be ideally positioned to thrive for generations to come.”
In addition to MDI Ventures’ lead-off fund and the latest entity, the unit has formed a $150m vehicle called Centauri with South Korea-based financial services firm KB Financial, in December 2019, as well as a $40m fund with another Telkom subsidiary, Telkomsel.
