26
FORBES ASIA MARCH 20202009 2010 2011Tokopedia Funding History
ANGEL
1 billion rupiah
PT Indonusa
DwitamaSERIES
Amount
Funding byA
Undisclosed
East VenturesB
$700,000
CyberAgent
VenturesTanuwijaya’s biggest step of all is a planned
IPO for Tokopedia, which could happen as ear-
ly as this year and would make it the first of In-
donesia’s five unicorns to go public. The company
has already announced that a round of fundrais-
ing underway this quarter—for an expected $1.5
billion—will be its last before the IPO. To prepare
the company for a listing, the company last year
appointed Agus Martowardojo as its president
commissioner.This move gives Tokopedia a huge boost in
credibility, as Martowardojo is one of the most
respected financial figures in the country. He was
both Indonesia’s finance minister and head of its
central bank, and ran one of its largest banks,
Bank Mandiri, for five years. Tokopedia has said
that it would like to have a dual listing, on the In-
donesia Stock Exchange and one other, as yet un-
announced, exchange.
An IPO would be a capstone on Tanuwijaya’s
journey to build Tokopedia, which just passed its
one-decade mark in business last year. “Our first
10-year vision is to be a technology company that
helps anyone who wants to be an e-commerce
company,” he says.Tanuwijaya comes from Pematang Siantar, a
small city in North Sumatra. Upon graduating
from high school, his family sent him to study IT
at Jakarta’s Bina Nusantara University. Things
got tough when his father, who worked in a ciga-
rette factory, contracted cancer in his sophomore
year. To make ends meet, he took a side job as
an internet cafe operator. The shifts were long
and tiring, from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., but it also gave
Tanuwijaya a chance to learn about the internet,at a time when access was still relatively inconve-
nient and expensive in Indonesia.
“I fell in love with the internet from then on—
it was a blessing in disguise, although it was also
a struggle to study in the morning after working
all night long,” he says, adding that working the
night shift inspired Tokopedia’s owl logo.
In 2007, he got the idea of starting a site that
would allow anyone from across the archipelago
nation to easily sell their products online. He in-
vited his college buddy Leontinus Alpha Edison,
now 38, to join him. The pair registered the do-
main name Tokopedia, which combined the In-
donesian word for shop, toko, with “pedia.”
At first, Tanuwijaya and Edison could only de-
velop the site as a side project while working full-
time at content provider company PT Indocom
Mediatama, where Tanuwijaya was the IT and
business development manager and Edison the
general manager. While the site was still in devel-
opment, they asked their boss Victor Fungkong
to become an angel investor. At first skeptical,
Fungkong eventually took an 80% stake for 1 bil-
lion rupiah in 2009 (with the founders holding
the rest). The pair officially launched Tokopedia
on what they hoped would be an auspicious date:
August 17—Indonesia’s independence day. To-
day, Fungkong remains a shareholder, although
his ownership has been diluted.
In the early years, Tokopedia only had four em-
ployees, including Tanuwijaya and Edison, and
less than 100 merchants on the site. On week-
ends, Tanuwijaya and Edison would take turns
running the site and sleep in shifts. A year after
the launch, local investment firm East Ventures
became the first VC to invest in the company.
“Ten years ago, Indonesia had nothing; no digital
economy and no funding ecosystem. But Tanu-
wijaya and Edison stood out when we met them
for the first time, the next day we sealed the deal.
Their business model and numbers were similar
to other early-stage startups, but their passion
and fire were different,” says Willson Cuaca, co-
founder and managing partner of East Ventures.William Tanuwijaya
and Leontinus
Alpha Edison during
Tokopedia's early days.COURTESY OF TOKOPEDIATECHNOLOGY