After Four Months of Operations Freeware is Home to 12 Startups

Freeware, the free co-working space which had only began operating actively in January 2013, just announced that it already is home to 12 startups which are hosted at the Medco building in Ampera, South Jakarta. Freeware is operated by Grupara, the Indonesian tech startup incubator which was established in 2011.

Some of the startups hosted at Freeware are also involved with Ideosource or the now dormant Project Eden in addition to a number of bootstrapped ones.The twelve startups are Lolabox, Maskoolin, Gravira, Kelir.TV, Telunjuk, Glassfinger, TSATB, Blinc*, Kivibyte, Flamingo, Pingmaru, and Diemdiem. While we've covered Lolabox, Maskoolin, Gravira, Telunjuk, and Flamingo previously, the others have yet to be highlighted.

Kelir.TV is a B2B video streaming startup serving broadcast TV networks and brands. Founded by former Detik engineers, the company has received investment from Ideosource. Glassfingers is a game development company which was part of Project Eden. TSATB is a digital agency with a focus on youth market, founded and run by Benazio Rizki Putra who is an Indonesian Internet celebrity with his own set of KakaoTalk stickers.

Blinc* is building a customer loyalty program which will launch in a few months, while Kivibyte is an inbound marketing company which was co-founded by Gravira CEO Christopher M. Satriandaru. Pingmaru is a live chat system for e-commerce companies to allow their customers to interact directly with their customer support officers. Lastly, Diemdiem, which literally means hush hush, is still in stealth mode.

Aryo Ariotedjo, co-founder of Grupara and Freeware wants to draw a distinction between his incubator company and the co-working space. While many have linked the two together, he said that they are actually two separate entities. "I would say [Freeware] is a non-profit entity and trying to make our own tenants to help themselves in terms of making Freeware to continue its existence. They felt helped with this program and I am sure they will also help develop Freeware into a bigger community. We always try to make Freeware as neutral as possible”.

Companies incubated by Grupara are hosted at Freeware but the space is also open to individuals and other companies who wish to use the facilities on a casual basis. For long term or permanent use though, companies wishing to reserve spots at Freeware must apply and be approved. "The reason we created Freeware is so that we can build an day to day occurring community for entrepreneurs to build their business together with their other peers", he said.

As a service to Freeware tenants, Grupara startups, as well as to draw more entrepreneurs to the space, Freeware hosts a weekly sharing session in which it invites industry figures to come and talk about their experiences and views on a number of matters. Past speakers have included former Yahoo Indonesia Country Director Pontus Sonnerstedt, Veritrans CEO and co-founder Ryu Kawano Suliawan, Tiket COO Natali Ardianto, co-founder and CEO for Rocket Internet Southeast Asia Stefan Jung, advertising legend Danny Wirianto, as well as AdPlus co-founder Yazid Faizin.

Tomorrow, Freeware will host Fajar Budiprasetyo, co-founder of Koprol and Ice House, while next Friday, former chief designer at Tiket.com and co-founder of Weekend Inc. Richard Fang will be at Freeware. You can register for Freeware events at Eventbrite.

[Update]we made a mistake in reading the press release and have made corrections to reflect that