Northstar Seeks for Hefty Gem in the Indonesian Market

Last April, Singapore headquartered Private Equity firm Northstar had announced the closure of its fifth flagship fund. Since its debut in 2003,  Northstar has been actively investing in the Indonesian market. One of their notable portfolios is the ride-hailing giant, Gojek.

With the number of young population and growing consumer base powering the country’s economy, Indonesia remains the largest market for investors in Southeast Asia. This is clearly stated by Northstar's Co-Chief Investment, Sunata Tjiterosampurno, in an exclusive interview session with DailySocial. Therefore, whenever some investors look for opportunities in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has to be on the map.

As we continue discussing the investment landscape in Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia, he suggests to not generalized the VC and PE landscape. On the PE landscape, he continued, Indonesia is said to be quite an interesting market due to lots of mid-market deals ($50-100 million).

Singapore, on the other hand, is a market on its own. It's a relatively similar landscape to Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. He also highlighted the fact that there are not many natural resources or community-related sectors in Singapore. Also, there are more manufacturing-based deals in Thailand, compared to Indonesia which serves mostly consumer mass-market types of deals.

In terms of private equity firms, historically and still going forward, getting exposure to the growing consumption in Indonesia because the middle class is growing is an important theme in Northstar. Especially in this digital age, where everything starts to shift into non-conventional ways.

"Digital has become a big component of the economy and it is impacting consumer mass-market and financial services businesses in various ways. The transformation of business models in such segments has resulted in investment in a more digital-oriented business often leading to an online-offline business mode," he added.