Green pilots & capitals emerge 🌱. Komdigi tightens platform rules 🔧. Jakarta rises 🚀
Dear subscribers,
This week’s roundup brings a wave of momentum across Southeast Asia’s tech and innovation landscape. From fresh climate-tech funding in Indonesia and Vietnam, to QRIS preparing cross-border expansion, and regulators tightening digital compliance, the region is buzzing with activity. Southeast Asia is entering 2025 with stronger infrastructure, sharper innovation, and growing global relevance.
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The DailySocial Team
🚨 What’s New
The Indonesian-Australian partnership KINETIK announced that five climate-tech startups from its KINETIK NEX programme have been awarded pilot‐funding after pitching at the [RE]Spark 2025 festival in Jakarta. KINETIK The winners, ranging from inclusive electric-mobility and solar water systems to solar-powered sago processing in remote Papua, will implement their innovations using a pooled fund of approximately IDR 1.6 billion. KINETIK The initiative underlines the focus on locally led green innovation across Indonesia’s diverse geographies.
![Five KINETIK NEX startups awarded pilot funding at [RE]Spark 2025](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ltYK!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb05d8c89-8da4-4674-83f8-7653ea8e22a0_1536x864.jpeg "Five KINETIK NEX startups awarded pilot funding at [RE]Spark 2025")
Vietnamese VC firm Touchstone Partners has launched a US $10 million “Green Transition Fund” targeting early-stage climate tech startups throughout Southeast Asia. The fund exemplifies the region’s growing appetite for sustainability-driven venture capital and aligns with global net-zero ambitions. Deployment is anticipated to begin in December 2025.
![Five KINETIK NEX startups awarded pilot funding at [RE]Spark 2025](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ltYK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb05d8c89-8da4-4674-83f8-7653ea8e22a0_1536x864.jpeg "Five KINETIK NEX startups awarded pilot funding at [RE]Spark 2025")
👏 What’s Exciting
Indonesia’s digital payments system, the QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesia Standard), is set to expand cross-border into China and South Korea by 2026, according to Bank Indonesia. This move signals a major shift toward integrated regional payment infrastructure, enabling Indonesian consumers and merchants to transact seamlessly abroad.
The Indonesian regulatory authority Kementerian Komunikasi dan Digital (Komdigi) has threatened to block services such as ChatGPT and Cloudflare, Inc. for failing to register as private electronic system providers (PSE) under national law. The notification issued covers 25 organisations, signalling heightened digital-sovereignty enforcement in Indonesia’s tech ecosystem. Non-registration could lead to service termination, putting major global platforms on notice.
Logistics player J&T Express reported a record surge in parcel volumes during the year-end peak season: +78 % year-on-year in Southeast Asia and +83 % in new markets. The boom underscores sustained e-commerce momentum and logistical scaling across the region. Riders, fulfilment centres and tech infrastructure are all under pressure as growth accelerates.
Fazpass is positioning its Intelligent Authentication (FIA) as the future of OTP verification by addressing core business challenges with a shift to a Monthly Active User (MAU) pricing model. This approach offers companies predictable costs with unlimited OTPs, moving away from the variable, per-message charges of traditional vendors. Coupled with AI-driven authentication designed to improve success rates and reduce user friction, Fazpass aims to provide a more scalable, secure, and cost-effective verification solution for businesses in 2026 and beyond.
For more capability information: https://fazpass.com.🚀 What’s Next
The 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Report by Startup Genome highlights Southeast Asia’s accelerating momentum, with Jakarta jumping four positions to become the world’s #2 Emerging Startup Ecosystem. Unlike other climbers, Jakarta’s rise wasn’t driven by a major exit. Wuxi climbed to #1 after a 67% surge in $50M+ exits, and Riyadh leapt rankings thanks to rasan.co’s $1.1B exit. Jakarta’s improvement instead reflects broader, steady strengthening across early-stage activity, a rare organic shift in today’s exit-driven landscape.
Jakarta now sits alongside cities advancing through aggressive policy pushes. Istanbul rose 10 spots on growing Performance, Funding, and Market Reach, while Nanjing and Phoenix each climbed 13 places into the Top 15 Emerging Ecosystems. In contrast, Jakarta moved up without major new interventions or flagship programs, signaling underlying momentum rather than a sudden policy shock — something increasingly uncommon among fast-rising ecosystems.
The report also incorporates AI-Native Transition for the first time, reflecting the global race toward AI-led competitiveness. Shenzhen now hosts 51,100 robotics enterprises and invests up to $68.6M per year in AI R&D and model training, while Singapore and Hyderabad are scaling major Deep Tech and AI-city initiatives. Jakarta’s rise occurred before it becomes a major AI hub, suggesting its current gains are.