DNA! ScaleBox Raised over 10 Million USD for Funding Digital Start-ups

14 Mar 2022
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BSD City, March 14 2022 – Sinar Mas Land, through the Digital Hub, successfully hosted the Scalebox. It is a program that drew 175 start-ups from BSD City, Jakarta Greater Area, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and 20 other provinces across the nation, as well as from Japan and the Netherlands. Co-organized by Nakama.id, Scalebox provided training and help to digital-based start-ups.

Scalebox was held virtually for four months starting from September 2021 to January 2022. During the program, Digital Hub and Nakama.id provide learning opportunities and competition for start-up entrepreneurs. Hundreds of participants were then whittled down in many phases until the top 10 were invited to Demo Day to meet with venture capitalists and angel investors face to face. Among the top 10 start-ups, there were 8 to receive the funding. These start-ups are Female in Action, Xetia, Leastric, Amiga, Educourse, Carikemasandotcom, Aquila Herbs, and Spiralife. Furthermore, the venture capital companies collaborating on Scalebox are Sinar Mas Land, Sovereign's Capital, Patamar Capital, MDI Ventures, EV Growth, Ideasource and Spiral Ventures, along with 10 other angel investors.

Digital Tech Ecosystem & Development Sinar Mas Land CEO, Irawan Harahap envisions that the funding from the Scalebox program can be utilized to help start-up entrepreneurs to develop more successfully. “Sinar Mas Land created a Digital Hub more than its tangible development, but also as an ecosystem. As a melting pot for digital ecosystem, we also support the needs of the community and allow them to thrive with us. We hope that the start-ups funded through the Scalebox program would become the Digital Hub champions," stated Irawan.

Nakama.id CEO, Debora Temmy mentioned that this program drew a lot of favourable responses from start-up entrepreneurs and investors. "Scalebox provides start-up entrepreneurs access to mentoring, training, and funding. Of the ten top firms, eight were chosen to receive funds from MD Co. and Patamar Capital totalling more than 10 million dollars, as well as learning credits on Amazon Web Services (AWS) worth USD 300,000," Temmy added.

Scalebox received positive reactions from both start-up entrepreneurs from home and abroad. “Scalebox's training helped me develop my company plan. From here, I was able to identify several blind spots that can be solved right away so that my application can run more efficiently," said Agus Setia of Xetia.io, who joined this program from Osaka, Japan.

In addition to venture capital funds, Nakama.id will provide start-ups with potential access market, so that the start-ups may grow more, scale up more easily, and enhance their businesses. Parker, AWS, Instellar, Indigo, Venturi Startup Studio, Cakruk, STEMpreneur, Impactpreneur, Founders Live, Chameleon, Media Startup, Startup Borneo, Palembang Digital, Group of Smart Courses (GSC), and Rakamin Academy were among the sponsors of the event.