Indonesia's state-owned telecom giant wants to sell MDI Ventures. The venture arm manages $830 million. Someone at the company woke up and remembered assets have prices.
State-owned telecoms buying venture capital firms is like your dad starting a TikTok account. Nobody asked for it. Nobody knows why it happened. Now he wants out but won't admit it was a mistake.
MDI Ventures has been throwing money at startups since 2015. Eleven years of picking winners in Southeast Asian tech. The track record must be spectacular if they're keeping it this quiet.
The people familiar with the matter won't go on record. Can't imagine why. Nothing says confidence like anonymous sources discussing whether your $830 million experiment should exist.
Retail traders will see this headline and think it means something. They'll check if MDI Ventures invested in that food delivery app they use. They'll create a conspiracy theory about 5G infrastructure. They'll buy shares in the wrong Indonesian telecom company because the ticker symbol looked close enough.
State-owned means the Indonesian government has been playing venture capitalist with taxpayer money. The same government that runs the post office now picks Series B rounds. What could go wrong.
The sale is being explored. Explored is corporate speak for we hired bankers and they're making PowerPoints. Six months from now they'll explore harder. A year from now they'll still be exploring. Eventually someone will buy it for $400 million and everyone will call it a success.
Somewhere in Jakarta a finance minister is explaining to a board why selling the venture arm makes strategic sense. The real reason is they need the cash. The stated reason will be forty-seven slides about operational efficiency and core competencies.
Your move is to do nothing because Indonesian telecom venture arm fire sales aren't an edge.
Photo by Ruben Sukatendel on Unsplash
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