Can You Truly Build and Scale a World-Class Company from Indonesia?
Every few months, like clockwork, someone posts a rousing declaration on LinkedIn: “Can Indonesia build the next global unicorn?” The comment section lights up with motivational jargon, digital red-and-white flags, and exclamation points used without mercy. “Yes, if we believe!” they say, as if belief alone can conjure a global payments infrastructure, tax clarity, and a team of product leads with deep AI chops.
This kind of techno-nationalism isn’t unique to Indonesia, but here it thrives particularly well. A mix of legitimate pride, survivor’s instinct, and years of being overlooked globally fuels it. And yet, behind the fervor, the fundamentals still matter. Building a solid local business? Absolutely doable. Building something with global relevance, and keeping it structurally, operationally, and legally Indonesian? Now that’s where the aspiration starts to wobble.
It’s not disloyalty to acknowledge this—it’s strategy. It’s what the serious players have already done, quietly. So yes, let’s believe. But maybe let’s also believe in accountants, lawyers, and cross-border tax treaties. Belief is powerful, but it’s not a substitute for infrastructure.
The Startup Ecosystem: A Theater of Valuations and Vaporware
Let’s get one thing straight: Indonesia has produced unicorns. Gojek. Tokopedia. Traveloka. All hailed as proof that the country could play on the world stage. They raised eye-watering amounts of money, hired aggressively, and scaled user numbers at a pace that impressed even Silicon Valley—though unfortunately, revenue and profitability didn’t quite get the same memo. Still, they were paraded around at glossy conferences where panelists wore too-tight batik shirts, and pitch decks were distributed like gospel.
But when the post-pandemic capital sugar high crashed in 2021, the reality check arrived hard and fast. Suddenly, these darlings of Southeast Asia were left holding bloated org charts, chaotic product roadmaps, and margins that only a mother (or a Tiger Global partner in 2020) could love. Cap tables were in shambles. Layoffs followed. Company cultures, already stretched thin, began to resemble pressure cookers.
And yet, in the ecosystem’s collective memory, they still live on as legends—names spoken in reverent tones at pitch nights and hackathons. Nobody likes to mention that most of them quietly redomiciled to Singapore years ago. Not after success. Before it. Because they knew the truth: Indonesia is a phenomenal market—but not yet a launchpad.
They didn’t shift because they gave up on Indonesia. They shifted because they understood it. The distinction is critical: they still operate in Indonesia, hire Indonesians, market to Indonesian consumers. But when it comes to holding IP, raising serious money, handling governance, and preparing for exits—they do it from Singapore. Not out of disloyalty, but because Singapore speaks the language that global capital understands. Indonesia, for now, is the stage. But the control room? It's offshore.
Why Build in Indonesia When You Can Pretend to and Operate From Singapore?
Let’s play a little due diligence bingo: open the corporate filings of any so-called “Indonesian” success story—a unicorn, a multi-sector conglomerate, or your cousin's half-baked crypto startup that promised a coin for every kilometer walked. Look for the holding company. Odds are, it’s not sitting in Bandung or Yogyakarta, no matter how many times they post about “proudly homegrown roots” on social media.
Because when it’s time to get serious—when real money, legal protection, and cross-border movement come into play—everyone quietly slides their chips across the table to Singapore.
Singapore is the preferred escape hatch for good reason. It offers everything the Indonesian ecosystem lacks in abundance: contract enforcement, tax laws that don’t change with the weather, and a banking system where "international transfer" doesn’t mean a three-day blackout. Investors like predictability, transparency, and exits they don’t need to pray over.
And let's talk talent. Say you're a global product lead or data scientist weighing a job offer. One option involves relocating to Singapore, land of efficient trains and hawker centers. The other involves grinding through Jakarta traffic, just to get to a shared office with inconsistent AC and a daily PM2.5 intake that violates several international health treaties. It's not a tough choice.
Singapore, in this context, isn’t a betrayal of Indonesia—it’s a reality upgrade. It's where companies go when they want to be taken seriously by the outside world. The branding stays Indonesian. The impact, ideally, stays local. But the risk, structure, and capital? That’s been politely relocated to somewhere safer, tidier, and a lot more investor-friendly.
he Talent Bottleneck: Jakarta Is Not (Yet) a Global Talent Magnet
Let’s say, against all odds, you’re building a world-class company in Indonesia. You’ve found product-market fit. Investors are circling. Now, you need to scale. You go hunting for top-tier talent: a data scientist who’s helped ship at Netflix, a CFO who’s danced through a London IPO, and a product lead who’s designed apps used by hundreds of millions. You’re not asking for miracles, just people who’ve actually done the thing before.
Then comes the hard part: convincing them to move to Jakarta.
And that’s when reality slaps you across the face. Because for all of Jakarta’s energy and economic promise, it still isn’t a global talent magnet. It’s not a lifestyle destination. It’s not an ecosystem hub. And it’s certainly not on anyone’s “dream relocation” list unless they’re already from here.
Even local founders admit it: execution talent is solid and improving every year. But when it comes to leadership-level experience in scaling tech orgs, brand building, or global finance, the pool is still ankle-deep. Most of what exists is scattered, overbooked, or already employed by government-backed behemoths.
Importing foreign talent? Theoretically doable. Practically painful. The visa process is ambiguous, slow, and optimized more for yoga instructors in Ubud than CTOs from Berlin. You’ll burn weeks trying to get clarity, only to be told the immigration officer is “on leave until further notice.”
And even if you do secure that visa, you’ll still have to make the pitch: leave your predictable, cosmopolitan, tap-water-safe lifestyle… for Sudirman. With love, and an air purifier.
Global talent wants frictionless mobility, a thriving peer group, and a city they can brag about on Instagram. Jakarta’s getting there—but it's not there yet.
Capital, Bureaucracy, and the Rules of the Game
So let’s imagine the dream scenario: you’ve done the hard bit. You’ve built something real. Not just vanity metrics and headline partnerships, but actual product-market fit, recurring revenue, a loyal user base—maybe even EBITDA. And somehow, you’ve done all this while keeping the company structurally based in Indonesia. Congratulations.
Now comes the next hurdle: raising a proper Series C round.
Here’s where reality rears its unsentimental head. Most global funds aren’t exactly itching to drop tens of millions into an entity registered under a legal framework where contract enforcement is part ritual, part roulette. If your IP is under Indonesian law, your investor updates better include daily prayers. Even seasoned board members start eyeing the exits when they realize quarterly meetings mean flying into Soekarno-Hatta and getting stuck in three hours of traffic just to approve a stock option plan.
Meanwhile, your competitors, who quietly flipped their structures to Singapore two years ago, are cruising. They’re raising in USD, their board meetings are catered by Din Tai Fung, and their CFOs aren’t pulling all-nighters trying to decode local tax updates.
And that’s before you make a profit—should you be cursed enough to become a cash-positive business in Indonesia, the tax implications alone will require you to hire a small army of consultants, and lawyers.
So you do what everyone eventually does: you move the “core” to Singapore. The holding company. The IP. The investor protections. The real money. You still fly the flag at local events, talk about “giving back,” and keep an operations team in Jakarta. But the real control room is now sipping G&Ts on the 47th floor of some REIT-owned tower in Raffles Place.
It’s not betrayal. It’s survival. Or as it’s known in startup terms: a necessary restructure.
Let’s be clear—Indonesia is no joke. It’s massive, fast-growing, digitally hungry, and full of scrappy, ambitious talent. If you want to test a product, build real traction, or tap into one of the most dynamic consumer markets in the world, Indonesia is a goldmine. You can absolutely build something here. You can even start something here that eventually changes the game.
But keeping that entire journey contained within the borders of Indonesia? That’s where the optimism starts to drift into fiction. The idea that you can scale a global business, raise institutional capital, attract senior talent, manage complex international operations, and remain fully Indo-rooted—it’s a beautiful story. But one that ignores how the real mechanics of global business work.
Singapore isn’t the enemy. It’s the infrastructure. And moving parts of your business there isn’t treason—it’s standard operating procedure. The trick isn’t resisting it—it’s designing around it while keeping your mission, culture, and local impact intact.
So yes, build here. Hire here. Grow here. But when the time comes, and your ambition gets bigger than the local legal code, don’t be surprised when the paperwork (and your investors) take the fast boat to Singapore. It’s not selling out. It’s scaling up.