Of all the countries I visited, Indonesia is a place I could draw maximum parallels with. It's is a sprawling nation of thousands of islands, hence called Nusantara, much like my hometown Mumbai, which is built on seven islands.

The culture also feels familiar. In both places, the mother is the center of the family. We believe a mother's curse is a terrible thing (referred often in folk tales), and her love is more valuable than any material wealth, re-affirmed by famous movie dailougue, Mere paas maa hai.

The linguistic connection between two country is most fascinating. The Bahasa Indonesia has many words from Sanskrit. For example, nusa is a Sanskrit word for 'island'. This shows our ancient links through trade and religion.

In Frappe's journey, we experienced traction from Indonesia form very early days. Rushabh and Saurabh visited indonesia in 2018, while Faraz visited again in 2024. This established history made Indonesia the obvious place for me to begin our ground efforts in the APAC region, especially given the encouraging growth of our local partners and first Frappe Local Conference, a community event.

Given Frappe's ecosystem with numerous initiatives and stakeholders, it's easy to plan multiple activities for a single trip. While attending the Frappe Local conference was our primary purpose, we also used the time to meet with partners and customers, conduct training events, and explore the vibrant neighborhoods of Jakarta.

Meeting Indonesia Partners

Agile Technica

Agile Technica was central to our visit. As one of our most trusted and fastest-growing partners in the region, we met their founders, Arvy and Hans, on the day we landed.

Both born in Indonesia and educated in Australia, they bring complementary strengths. Hans, a developer, was determined to build a business on the Frappe Framework from the moment he discovered it. Arvy, with his extroverted personality and business background, handles all external operations. Together, they have built Agile Technica into a team of over thirty+ people.

They were the primary sponsors of the Frappe Local event and took the lead in organizing it.

PT Nusantara

Anton is of the oldest and strongest pillar of Frappe's Indonesia community. After a period of misalignment, we successfully reconnected our goals on this trip. Anton was exceptionally kind, showing us around Jakarta's monuments like Monas, Lapangan Banteng Park, Kota Tua, and the vibrant PIK area. Seeing him re-align with his team was one of the most positive outcomes of our visit.

Imogo & Indonesia HR Localisation

Danny, founder of the CAO Group, is a serial entrepreneur, finance professional, and self-taught programmer. He stood out as one of the most enthusiastic open-source advocates we met. Imogo, CAO's IT department, has recently been established as a separate business unit.

The team at Imogo—Ichawan, Irfan, and Chandra, who all have Oracle backgrounds—made a strategic move to establish their presence in the ecosystem. Even before monetizing ERPNext services, they built and open-sourced the HR localisation app for Indonesia.

Intellion

Intellion provides managed services to NGOs. Its founder, Danang Widodo, has decades of experience in the NGO sector and is highly respected, having mentioned and consulted for numerous organizations, including those executing USAID projects.

Intellion bundles ERPNext as part of its managed service offering for NGO clients, which also includes accounting, financial, and administrative services. This allows NGOs with limited budgets and expertise to outsource non-core functions to experts like Intellion and focus on their primary missions.

Indo-Cyber

Indo-Cyber specializes in resource augmentation, primarily for the fintech sector, and has successfully placed over 1,200 professionals. While many service companies focus on last-mile delivery, they often compromise on critical aspects like talent development. Ironically, the availability and quality of talent are what matter most for a service business to succeed. We hope Indo-Cyber will leverage its expertise in talent development to train people on Frappe and ERPNext, thereby strengthening the Frappe community in Indonesia and beyond.

Hussain, the Builder

As Hussain ventured for the ambitious journey of building BWH Studios, he remained a de-facto Frappe Evengelist. His training resources on Frappe Framework has helped community members excel. It's only natural to have Hussain join Frappe team in tours like these to amplify the impact, especially through his training sessions.

Frappe Local Indonesia

Frappe Local Indonesia turned-out to be decent event, attracting visitors and partners from near-by countries like Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. During the full-day event, customers shared their experiences of how they transfored their companies by implementing ERPNext.

Customer Talks

• Hamdan Faiz shared his journey of implementing ERPNext within a pharmaceutical business.
• Timothy explained how Frappe apps are being used to manage operations at a data center.

You can watch all the talks from the Indonesia conference here.

Talks from APAC Partners

A common theme emerged: most Frappe partners began as users. Their strong belief in the product's capabilities motivated them to build services around it.

• Hans Permana presented the Indonesia Compliance app, which automates tax configurations and generates reports for the local authorities.
• Munim (from Invento, Bangladesh) shared how they built an e-commerce site using the Frappe Builder.
• Kitti (from Ecosoft, Thailand) shared his journey of moving from Odoo to Frappe, driven by a commitment to open-source values that Frappe upholds.
• Jake Lim (Kingstech, Singapore) explained how they help businesses implement ERPNext by leveraging government subsidies and gave a preview of their Singapore Compliance app.

Talks from Frappe Team

Members of the Frappe team and Hussain also delivered engaging talks.

• Rohit Waghchaure unveiled upcoming features in ERPNext Version 16 for the stock and manufacturing modules.
• Hussain shared his evangelism journey, from humble beginnings teaching the community via webinars to becoming an international face of Frappe.
• Smital briefed the community on Frappe Cloud features and how it helps businesses reduce DevOps costs.
• Karan introduced himself as the (then) Partner Manager for the APAC region.
• I delivered the opening talk, sharing the Frappe story and a glimpse of Frappe Studio—a powerful app and the future of the framework, built by Rucha Mahabal.

Indonesia Partners Meet-up

At Frappe, we prioritize partnership relationships above mere business transactions. In Africa, we hosted a meet-up during a jungle safari. In Dubai and Saudi, we invited partners to a museum, strolling and discussing history, philosophy, and personal journeys. We continued this tradition in Indonesia.

We invited partners to the Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) area in Jakarta, famous for its beautiful traditional Chinese-style architecture. It was rewarding to see the APAC community connect so well, casually discussing local culture, business challenges, and plans for expansion.

This was our trip to Indonesia, hustle, relationship, strolls, food, and memories to last a lifetime. Thanks to Indonesia's community of Frappe and open-source enthusiasts.

Signing off with some pictures so you can experience the moments with us. Hope to be back soon.