Street hawkers pave the way to Indonesia’s first e-commerce IPO

JAKARTA (Sept 28): The first Indonesian e-commerce startup to go public will test investors’ appetite for technology companies that hail from Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

PT Kioson Komersial Indonesia, which connects some 19,000 merchants in 300 cities with consumers, lists October 3 after raising 45 billion rupiah ($4.5 million). While small, its initial public offering provides a gauge of confidence in the archipelago’s burgeoning startup industry, now dominated by private firms backed by the country’s richest families.

Kioson acts as a sort of middle-man that helps mom-and-pop stores and roadside kiosks, known as warung, sell everything from mobile phone credit to airline tickets. It hands out tablets loaded with its shopping app to merchants, who become the physical storefronts for digital sellers featured on Kioson’s site, such as Tokopedia. Buyers browse in person and place orders before handing cash over to the vendors, who then acquire the desired items through Kioson’s app, pocketing a small fee.

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