Founded in early 2015, Alpha JWC Ventures is among the newest venture capital (VC) companies riding Indonesia’s robust digital startups trend. Over the past year the company has been putting its investment portfolio in financial technology (fintech) startups in the country, believing in its huge potential to complement existing financial institutions and help accelerate financial inclusion. “We’re sector-agnostic but based on our evaluation of over 300 companies in the region over the past 12 months, fintech and SaaS (software as a service) like Salesforce are looking to be the next wave. And big data is starting to emerge,” says Alpha JWC cofounder Jefrey Joe, who founded the company with his two other partners Will Ongkowidjaja and Chandra Tjan—the founders’s first names make up the JWC of Alpha JWC, while alpha stands for the return the trio hopes to achieve.
Despite being a new VC, the trio has a deep pool of expertise in investments and startups. The three also have complementary skills. Jefrey is the operations guy, as prior to co-founding Alpha JWC Ventures, he was the chief operating officer of Groupon Indonesia. Will is the finance guy, having extensive experience in advising business owners and senior management in Indonesia on over $5 billion of IPOs, M&A, and bond issuances while a director at UBS Investment Bank in Indonesia and management consulting at McKinsey & Company in Indonesia and Booz Allen Hamilton in Australia.