Startup Failures in Indonesia

The Indonesian BNPL pioneer raised $270M but couldn't escape high default rates in underbanked markets

Indonesia's logistics aggregator was squeezed to death between giant competitors and rising fuel costs.

Southeast Asia's grocery delivery pioneer that could not survive the super-app squeeze

The agtech marketplace connecting Indonesian farmers to buyers — undone by archipelago logistics

Indonesia's super-app merger IPO'd at $28B then sold its crown jewel to TikTok

Indonesia's second-largest marketplace that abandoned ecommerce entirely after its IPO

Indonesia's SME payments darling survived COVID only by selling itself to Gojek.

Indonesia's super-app giant couldn't conquer India's hyper-competitive mobility market.

Indonesian SME digital bank crowded out by GoPay, OVO, and Tokopedia's banking ambitions

An Indonesian budget hotel aggregator backed by East Ventures that survived four years and was destroyed by COVID in two weeks.

The Indonesian used motorcycle marketplace raised $52M from Alpha JWC and Northstar to digitize a 4 million unit annual market and had to slash 50% of its workforce within 18 months.

An Indonesian apartment rental platform that ran for eight years before the post-COVID real estate correction killed its model.

JD.com Indonesian subsidiary invested billions to replicate China ecommerce success in Southeast Asia and exited in 2023 after eight years of losses.

Indonesia fintech second wave: GoPay (100M+), OVO (80M+), Dana (60M+) covered 240M users in a 270M population before the new license was processed

Indonesia fashion ecommerce startup backed by Vertex Ventures and Sequoia India that raised $35M and shut down in 2021 as Shopee and Tokopedia crushed standalone fashion players.

Indonesian gaming voucher and digital payments platform displaced by mobile wallet integration.

Indonesia's credit scoring AI acqui-hired as super-apps built the same capability in-house

Joint venture between XL Axiata and SK Planet raised hundreds of millions to become a top Indonesian marketplace and surrendered after eight years.

Lippo Group poured $500M into an Indonesian ecommerce platform and shut it down two years later when Tokopedia and Lazada proved unbeatable.

Indonesian P2P fintech super-app raised $108M and faced major default crisis in 2022

Indonesian super-app that merged with Tokopedia, raised $13B+, and still could not beat Grab and Shopee.

Jakarta's peer lending fintech was swept up in OJK's P2P lending regulatory crackdown

A Bezos and Sequoia-backed B2B warung commerce platform that could not crack informal retail economics in Indonesia.

Indonesian retail operations SaaS that raised $6M and could not survive the Southeast Asian B2B SaaS winter.

The pioneer of Indonesian P2P lending raised $131M from MUFG and SBI, reached $700M+ in loans disbursed, then had its lending license revoked in October 2024 as NPLs spiraled.

Indonesian digital freight marketplace squeezed between Gojek and Grab logistics arms

Indonesia's P2P lending platform that regulatory tightening killed at scale

BNPL and micro-installments for Indonesia's gig workers — OJK closed the door

Indonesia tech-enabled micro-store startup backed by Vertex and East Ventures that raised $30M before mass layoffs exposed the unit economics of upgrading informal kiosks as unsustainable.