1. Startup

East Ventures Announces New Portfolio, Releases East Ventures Angels Network

In the Jakarta Ventures Night (JVN) 2012 which was held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, East Ventures officially announced the two of their latest portfolio. Two startups are: Inapay and Jajalindo.

East Ventures (EV) is one of early stage investor who may be the most active in Indonesia. Some startups (which got their investment) have been discussed several times. East Ventures is one of Disdus investors, a daily service deal that got acquired by Groupon.

The announcement of this latest portfolio similar to what EV did when they officially announce their two new portfolios: Nightspade and TeknoUp in Jakarta Ventures Night 2011. For the 2012 JVN, they officially announced two portfolios again; so the total portfolio that they have now are 14,  11 from Indonesia and 3 from Singapore. In addition, there are 6 startups from Alpha Ventures East program, and they also make presentations in 2012 JVN.

Inapay is an intermediary payment system that provides similar services as "Joint Account" (REKBER). "Joint Account" is usually used in the process of buying and selling in market-forums, buying-selling websites or the marketplace, but with some secure facilities. One of the secure facilities is Inapass. In addition, they also provide inter-bank transfer service

DailySocial also several times wrote articles about Inapay. In the last article, CEO of Inapay, Mr  Ivan Sebastian revealed that they have earned investment, however their investor wasn't revealed yet.Now in the 2012 JVN event, they officially announced that they get an investment from East Ventures.

One recent EV portfolio is Jajalindo. As s local hyper location contextual search service, Jajalindo, offers location finding/search based on location's keyword.

Jajalindo was formed by 5 people and it was released less than a few months ago - beta release in Novembe; now it has 15,000 users. Jajalindo provides facilities for the users to review - user generated content. There is also a community system and badges as reward. Users can also search by keyword, category and city. The search results will display information from the site, such as profiles, descriptions, reviews, galleries and other nearby locations from search results which are related to the location.

From the presentations made at the JVN event, a part of developing current facilities they will develop their mobile service and grow activities or communities.

As mentioned earlier, these two portfolios added nto the East Ventures 'big family'. It's becoming 14 portfolios; from Tokopedia, PriceArea, TeknoUp, Nightspade, Scoop, Groupon Disdus (still on the list, their logo still appears on the 2012 JVN stage backdrop), idBlognetwork, Inapay, Soybeansoft, Scoop, Jajalindo, Urbanesia, Trendiest, Penn-Olson and Foound.

In the closing ceremony of 2012 JVN , Mr Willson Cuaca, a co-founder and managing partner of East Ventures, announced a new program called East Ventures Angels Network. Willson said the new program would continue the previous programs such as Jakarta and Bandung Ventures Night and East Ventures Alpha .

EV Angels Network will have an access to EV Alpha and open up the opportunities for those who wish to become angel investors in their network. As written by Penn-Olson (who is one of their portfolio), eventhough they refused to provide a list of angel network investors, but the EV Alpha mentors in the program become part of the  EV Angels Network. Apart from startup access in EV Alpha, Angels Network also has access to a startup that has been approached by EV.

The first batch of East Alpha Ventures is completed. The 2012 JVN event has also become a place for their demonstraton. Alpha EV is reported preparing to continue and open the second batch. So, let's wait for the next startup that would be the EV portfolio.Don't forget to follow us for further news from Inapay and Jajalindo (after obtaining the investment) and the development of the first Alpha EV 'graduates'.