In the last few years, investors from large economies like China and the US began turning some of their attention towards an emerging region like Southeast Asia. And lately, India, too, has been doing the same. In the last 12 months, founders of Indian unicorn startups have been picking up stakes in their Indonesian counterparts. For instance, India’s bookkeeping startup Khatabook and Indonesia’s BukuWarung; India’s B2B marketplace Udaan and Indonesia's Ula.
And just about a month ago, the co-founders of newly minted Indian social commerce unicorn Meesho invested in Indonesia’s Kitabeli. The investment comes at a time when social commerce is really heating up in the archipelago. Case in point—three different Indonesian social commerce startups announced their funding in the same week in September 2021.
You’re probably thinking: it makes sense. Indonesia and India are big markets. Therefore, a similar business model = a similar growth trajectory. Right? Well, that's not always the case. As it turns out, Meesho and Kitabeli have rather different approaches to running their businesses. The former focuses on resellers, while the latter targets end-consumers, and both business models come with their own set of challenges.
Interestingly, Kitabeli also has a group-buying feature like China’s Pinduoduo—something that could potentially thrust the Indonesian company into unicorn-dom if it could get more users to start using that option. What, then, is the purpose of Meesho’s investment in Kitabeli? Where’s the cross-pollination, if at all?
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