Rumor in the street said Ardent Labs Indonesia, an Ardent Capital’s effort to create new innovative startups, is about to be disbanded due to not achieving target, but Ardent Capital’s CEO Adrian Vanzyl confirmed they are still in operation and will launch two new startups in the coming months, hopefully before Eid.
We paid a visit to Ardent Labs office in Jakarta, which is built after Sinarmas Group invested in Ardent Capital. Packed in two stories, Ardent Labs (and whole startups under its management) currently employ 80 people. For those two startups alone, they are now having around 40 employees.
Vanzyl opened the conversation by saying they are about to launch two new businesses by the end of June. The first one is Bizzy, a B2B office supply company that will be involved in open procurement. The second one is Snapcart, still in private-beta mode, is an FMCG-focused retail rewards mobile app that gives users cashbacks in exchange for scanning their shopping receipts.
This year, Vanzyl assured, those two startups will be Ardent Labs’ main focus. He added they will look at starting a new Labs batch once these two businesses are fully fledged.
He expects both startups to be fully available for public by end of June, along with WhatsNew Indonesia that will focus on e-commerce and headed by Andrew Senduk. Beside operating Indonesia’s branch, it’s expected that some of Ardent e-commerce arm will be operationally shifted to Indonesia.
Asked whether Ardent Labs encourage “entrepreneur-in-residence” program, Vanzyl briefly answered they don’t have something like that its incubation program, but Ardent Labs will help any founder that’s funded by Ardent Capital with its resources.
Ardent Capital’s focus
In broader scale, Vanzyl said the term “Labs” is just concept within Ardent. For him, it’s not a thing, it’s more about methodology. The Labs in Thailand has successfully launched aCommerce and WhatsNew/Moxy and he hopes to replicate the same thing in Indonesia. When Ardent want to launch a new startup in Thailand (and Indonesia) again, they will use this kind of proven methodology. The next country in Ardent and its Labs’ pipeline is the Philippines.
When asked about why focusing on e-commerce, and particularly Indonesia, Vanzyl admitted that 90% investment, unicorn, and exit in this region is B2C companies or most people call it e-commerce. With its knowledge and assets, Ardent knows its capability on riding the e-commerce wave. This year Ardent predicts Indonesia, in particularly Jakarta, will be the center of e-commerce business in Southeast Asia, and want to be part of it.