Sparxup keynote speakers see great opportunity in Indonesia

• Fourth biggest market for Facebook, No 3 for Twitter
• Helsinki-based Blaast sees Indonesia as ‘mobile superpower’

INDONESIA is increasingly being seen as the next big technology market, driven by its population of 250 million and its rank as Facebook’s fourth biggest market and Twitter’s third.
 
Teruhide Sato, Group CEO of Netprice Japan, said his company saw great business opportunities in the republic’s growing young generation and middle class, in a number of different spheres of Internet business.
 
These spheres include “payment, business-to-consumer, online advertising, communities, games” and others. Sato will be delivering a keynote presentation at the Sparxup 2012 conference, where he will talk about market expansion in an emerging economy such as Indonesia.
 
“I think the best way to create an Internet business in this country now is to deploy those ‘proven’ business models with the latest technologies and methods, like open source, cloud, agile development and mobile, at a lower cost and build locally, support locally and be led by passionate and innovative local entrepreneurs” he added.
 
Sparxup is an annual event in Jakarta that combines a conference, startup competition and hackathon which kick off on Oct 3.

Blaast, a Helsinki-based mobile company, will be using Indonesia as the launch pad for its product.
 
“Indonesia is quickly emerging as one of the mobile superpowers. The combination of its young, tech-enthusiastic 240 million population and the quickly improving infrastructure makes it a very interesting ‘mobile first’ country,” said Blaast CEO Joonas Hjelt, another keynote speaker at the upcoming Sparxup 2012 conference.
 
“There are huge opportunities in the current feature phone market and even more so in the democratization of smartphones, which is getting closer day by day. These are also the main reasons why Blaast chose to be an Indonesia-first company,” he added.
 
Sparxup is an initiative by three entities – media companies DailySocial and Kompas.com, and brand and marketing communications company SemutApi -- as a means to contribute and grow Indonesia's appetite for tech, they said in a statement.
 
“We want to bring great speakers, both international and local, to fill in the knowledge gap. We believe that once this gap is filled, the tech industry would be boosted even more,” organizing committee chairman Rama Mamuaya said in a statement.
 
Matt Barrie, an entrepreneur who runs Freelance.com, is also joining Sparxup 2012 as a keynote speaker and sponsor. To date, over 2.5 million projects have been outsourced through his site, which won the 15th Annual Webby Awards as best Employment Site of the Year.
 
Sparxup 2012 will also host Indonesian entrepreneurs, such as Reza Prabowo, who will speak about the potential tech market outside of Jakarta.
 
“Jakarta gets the latest infrastructure updates first because the bigger infrastructure principals (telcos, Internet Service Providers, etc) are there,” he said, citing the need for exposure of other cities as potential markets.
 
Detailed information on speakers, conference tickets and sponsorship opportunities can be found on Sparxup’s official website http://www.sparxup.com/.
 
 
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Jakarta’s Sparxup conference, startup meet and hackathon in Oct