There’s something new from the third batch of Ideabox. This Indosat-supported incubator has Facebook joined as its new partner for the program. I need to emphasize that Facebook will actively involve itself in the 120 days-incubation process, which will be held in next November.
I had the opportunity to discuss with Indosat’s Head of Digital Services Usman Lodhi during Ideabox’s roadshow in Surabaya (2/9). He explained that Ideabox is the first incubator in Indonesia that becomes Facebook’s official partner.
“This is surely based on what we (Ideabox) have done so far. In my case, I believe that Facebook sees our success in producing quality startups, thus they decided to take part in developing the community,” he said.
How will the partnership be like? First, Facebook through its special division called FbStart, will provide mentorship during the program in November. The mentorship will be divided into two parts: interactive webinar and face-to-face session with Facebook’s team at Ideabox’s campus. One of mentoring topics would be about the best way to use Facebook for advertising.
Talking about advertising, Facebook will also give away credits to startups. This way, six to eight finalists may directly practice their promotion strategy to different market target right away after the program ends.
Third, those lucky startups will also get the access to various tools provided by FbStart, which can be used to optimize each own product. Interestingly, this mentorship package will also be available for the first and second batch graduates.
“We are discussing a number of additional initiatives with Facebook, which, of course, will be additional support for our startups,” Lodhi stated.
He further claimed that up to date, there are hundreds of applicants have applied for the program and counting, as many startups usually apply when the deadline is approaching.
It’s also interesting to know that Indosat apparently makes use of the graduates’ products. As we know that Indosat’s e-commerce service Cipika utilizes Shoop’s back end platform. Shoop is one of first batch’s graduates.
“Instead of spending millions for a foreign e-commerce platform, why not using our local resource which is as good?” he concluded.
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*) This article is written by Trenologi’s writer Glenn Kaonang