Kadin to groom start-ups for IPO

JAKARTA. The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (Kadin) has pledged to create an incubator for start-ups and to include them on a list of companies it is preparing to list on the stock exchange.

"After a screening process, Kadin has found that 12 companies are ready for an initial public offering [IPO]. They are from different sectors, such as media, printing, trucking and gas, and three of them are preparing for an IPO this year," Kadin chairman Rosan P. Roeslani said in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He declined to name the companies he was referring to, explaining only that they had assets of Rp 300 billion (US$21.6 million), Rp 900 billion and Rp 1 trillion respectively.

The start-up project is one element of Kadin's four-year program to support the development of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), besides capital market promotion and capital market coaching in several cities.

Rosan expresses his hope that the program would help the Indonesian the capital market flourish, with increased private and public participation.

“We have a very small number of direct investors, only 500,000. Adding mutual fund investors, there are only one million investors, which is very low against to the country’s population of 250 million,” Rosan said.

As for the incubator, Kadin vice chairman Emirsyah Satar said three investors had agreed to become sponsoring investors, namely Lippo (a business conglomerate controlled by the Riyadi family), Djarum (an Indonesian cigarette giant) and Emtek (an Indonesian media conglomerate).

"The incubator will help start-up companies as well as small-to-medium sized enterprises [SMEs] in terms of financing and management. It will be launched in April, as IDX president director Tito Sulistio has said, but will run effectively around June," he said. (Anton Hermansyah)