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    • SingCham is the premier business chamber for Singaporean interests in Indonesia. Founded in 2006, SingCham aims to promote the business interests of individuals or companies operating in Singapore and/or Indonesia. SingCham provides networking activities, events, and useful information for its members, and acts as the liaison between the Singaporean business community and the Singapore and Indonesian governments. With a focus on fostering better networking and feedback among members, SingCham is committed to providing valuable resources and insights to help members connect, learn, and grow their businesses in Indonesia. Join SingCham today and become part of a thriving business community that benefits from exclusive resources, networking opportunities, and business insights.

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    5Dec, 2018
    Indonesia’s warung goes digital

    Warung Tiga Putri is not your typical warung . Although it sells snacks, cigarettes and assorted knick-knacks like countless other ramshackle convenience stores across Indonesia’s towns and cities, the tiny bright-yellow kiosk does much more for it is one of Indonesia’s growing number of smart warung . No fewer than five CCTV cameras at the busy Jakarta kiosk collect data on customers, such as their approximate age and sex, which is later analysed to improve marketing, distribution and engagement.

    The concept is the brainchild of Warung Pintar, a local tech start-up that has transformed more than 1,000 warung and counting in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities.

    For the kiosk’s owner, Junaidi Salad, Warung Pintar has been a godsend. Before the company approached him about turning his 1.5-metre-wide kiosk into the first-ever smart warung , the 32-year-old was worried about being evicted from the roadside he had illegally occupied for several years. The tech start-up – whose co-founders used to work with Jakarta-based venture capitalist East Ventures – helped Salad gain legal status by moving the kiosk to the car park of one of its co-working spaces, where he doesn’t have to pay rent or for electricity.

    Warung Pintar isn’t alone in its efforts. Wahyoo, another start-up, aims to modernise food kiosks known as warteg that are scattered in Indonesia’s big cities. Much like Warung Pintar, Wahyoo is streamlining supply chains: wartegowners can now order bottled water, beverages, eggs, cooking oil, sugar, flour, tea, and coffee through a Wahyoo app. The company now has over 2,000 wartegunder its name, up from 50 soon after it was founded in April last year.

    “There are only a few warteg that are really clean, and that’s what deters people from eating in them. Despite that, warteg are always full,” said Wahyoo founder Peter Shearer. “We want to be the biggest digital warung operator in Indonesia. In the future we want to enable a point-of-sale system that will allow us to find out the bestsellers on the menu and identify consumers’ profiles.”

    Read more: South China Morning Post 

    13Sep, 2018
    Trade war pushes China to go on charm offensive over free-trade credentials

    Increasingly convinced that the trade war with the United States is unlikely to end soon, Beijing is stepping up its charm offensive to reassure foreign politicians and business leaders of its commitment to global free trade by opening and reforming its domestic economy.

    And next week’s “Summer Davos” – or the World Economic Forum’s Twelfth Annual Meeting of the New Champions – in Tianjin will serve as the next occasion for Beijing to outline its stance.

    “The Chinese government has high expectations for the conference,” Xia Qing, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission’s international department, said on Wednesday.

    It was at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January last year that President Xi Jinping made a now-famous keynote speech defending free trade while opposing the rising tide of protectionism. Xi sought to portray China as the new leading champion of globalisation.

    “As the trade war is tending to escalate, [China] is sending strong signals that it will firmly promote globalisation, trade liberalisation, that it will support the Belt and Road Initiative and actively respond to global technological changes,” Xia said.

    (read more: South China Morning Post)