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We wrote about Indonesia’s startup ecosystem being on trial ten days ago, and now the first case has concluded with eFishery founder Gibran Huzaifah given a nine-year prison sentence in a fraud case following the collapse of the startup.
Most readers are well aware of the case, but to briefly restate: eFishery developed smart fishing tech to help Indonesia’s fish farmers run their business more efficiently, later adding financial services and more. It raised nearly $300 million from investors including SoftBank and Temasek, with a valuation that reached $1.4 billion in 2023.
But Huzaifah came out publicly last year to admit he had fabricated revenue, as Business Times explains:
From January to September 2024, the company told investors it generated US$752 million in revenue and posted a profit of US$16 million. In reality, the probe found that the firm recorded only US$157 million in revenue during the period and suffered a loss of US$35.4 million.
Alongside Huzaifah, the court also sentenced Angga Hadrian Raditya, eFishery’s former VP of corporate finance and investor relations, to nine years in prison and Andri Yadi, a former VP, to seven years.
Now we wait for the case of former Gojek CEO Nadiem Makarim, who is accused of corruption from his time as education minister, which is expected to reach a conclusion next month. The case is very different to eFishery, and all evidence suggests Makarim is not guilty of the charges set against him.
It’s a difficult time for startups in Indonesia following a number of cases of fraud, culminating in eFishery’s capitulation. As I wrote earlier this month, I believe the narrative will shift as there remain great startups and founders in the country, solving problems that the incumbent system isn’t able to fix.
One of the concerns looking at Southeast Asia’s tech scene is where the AI startups that can compete globally will come from. One contender popped up yesterday when Formas, a Singapore-based startup that provides a design platform for the architecture, engineering and construction industry, raised $3.98 million in a pre-seed round.
The round was led by Singaporean funds Vertex, UntroD Capital, Hustle Fund, Big Sky Capital VC and Orvel Ventures.
Formas was founded by husband-and-wife duo Yiping Goh, a tech executive and former VC, and architecture academic Carlos Bañón last year. Around half of the round came from angel investors that the couple know, Goh told Asia Tech Review, to the point that there was no immediate plan to raise funding from VCs until word reached some funds that got in touch.
“For decades, design tools have asked architects to adapt their creativity to fit the constraints of software – fragmented across 5-10 disconnected tools, steep learning curves, and a core experience that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades,” Goh, whose past ventures include McKinsey Singapore, Quest Ventures and Indonesia’s MatahariMall.com, wrote on LinkedIn. Now, she believes that AI has reached the point where it can genuinely assist without glaring errors.
Formas launched its service in beta last November and it says users across 135 countries have created more than 500,000 designs. The target customer is architects, interior designers, spatial designers, virtual model designers and those in the real estate industry.
Indeed, Goh explained to ATR that early customers have cut their production time from weeks to as little as one day. One even won four projects within just two months of using the product. “There are many use cases and we cannot move fast enough to communicate them,” she added.
The global VC industry has pivoted significantly to focus on investing in AI. But, at this moment, Southeast Asia has far fewer AI startups emerging when compared to the US or even Europe. That makes a prospect like Formas, which unites a seasoned and well-known figure with a subject matter expert, a prospect that was always likely to get attention. Even if it wasn’t really looking to fundraise.
Now Formas is firmly on the radar. Can it break into the US and other Western markets meaningfully? Does that require taking capital from investors in those markets and pitting itself against AI startups in Silicon Valley and beyond?
Powered by its chip business, Samsung announced record results as revenue jumped 70% to 133.9 trillion KRW ($89.96 billion) with operating profit up 750% to 57.2 trillion KRW ($39.8 billion) [CNBC]
Amazon and Meta are among the firms that are set to lobby in India over the dominance of PhonePe and Google Pay on UPI [TechCrunch]
Indian test-prep company Allen Career Institute, which is backed by James Murdoch among others, is reportedly exploring a Mumbai IPO although there are no figures around a potential listing yet [Bloomberg]
Meta re-entered the stablecoin market after it quietly introduced digital currency payouts for select creators in the Philippines and Colombia, four years after it aborted its previous stablecoin venture [Fortune]
China halted new autonomous vehicle licences after dozens of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis abruptly stopped in Wuhan last month [Bloomberg]
Local demand for Huawei Ascend 950 chips has reportedly surged after DeepSeek’s new V4 model proved it can power advanced AI [Reuters]