GOJEK Founder Sent to Jail, East Ventures Invests in Amity Robotics

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Welcome back to The Asia Tech Podcast. Today we covered two major news stories — the jailing of a Gojek co-founder and a new robotics investment backed by East Ventures — alongside conversations about stablecoin payments, healthcare AI, cybersecurity, and venture capital across Southeast Asia.

• 22:34 Elad Itzhakian - Executive Director of R&D at Briya

• 44:33 Elsa Qiu - MD of Payments & Innovation at DCS Group

• 1:04:32 Agastya Samat - Founder & CEO at Zeya Health

• 1:22:58 Dr. Varin Khera - Co-Founder & CTO at SecStrike

• 2:00:50 Craig Dixon - Founding General Partner at Accelerating Asia Ventures

Here is an overview of the topics we discussed today:

Nadia Makarim — co-founder of Gojek and Indonesia’s former education minister — was sentenced on June 30 to 10 years in prison. The charge was abuse of authority during a pandemic-era school Chromebook procurement program. The court found that technical specs were shaped to favor Google, which had invested in Gojek-related entities, though it also ruled Makarim did not personally enrich himself. He must repay roughly $45 million or face more prison time. His team argues the program saved money and followed transparent processes. The larger signal here is harder to ignore: Makarim was one of Indonesia’s most visible examples of private-sector talent entering public service. His conviction raises sharp questions about investor confidence, procurement credibility, and how Indonesia’s ongoing corruption fight will reshape its tech economy.

Elsa brought data that reframes the stablecoin conversation. Stablecoins now move roughly $30 billion in daily transactions. Global foreign exchange trades about $10 trillion a day — mostly for trade, not speculation. The gap is enormous, but stablecoin volumes are doubling. Her view? The tipping point has already arrived. The friction isn’t the technology — it’s regulatory fragmentation. Indonesia bans stablecoin payments outright. Singapore and Hong Kong are building frameworks. Countries in between are still figuring it out. For businesses trying to move money across Asian borders, the speed and cost advantages of stablecoins are real, but market access is patchy. Her estimate for when stablecoin and traditional finance truly converge: five to ten years — much faster than the shift from cash to cashless.

Agastya started Zeya Health after finding a number that’s hard to explain away: healthcare spends eight times more on administration per billion dollars of revenue than any other industry. The solution isn’t a generic automation platform. Singapore alone has 35 different clinic management systems, and even two clinics running the same software configure it differently. Zeya integrates across the entire stack and builds workflows around how each clinic already operates. The goal is to cut change management to zero — because if staff have to change how they work, adoption fails no matter how good the product is.

Dr. Varin runs SecStrike, which does AI-powered offensive and defensive cybersecurity. In a recent test against a Tier 1 APAC operator, his AI agents ran alongside a 12-person human penetration testing team. The AI found more vulnerabilities. The humans found the ones that actually mattered. That distinction is the product. SecStrike’s approach — SMAV, or Symbiotic Multi-Agent Validator — runs multiple AI models in parallel, has them cross-check each other, and keeps humans in the loop before any destructive action is taken. The other shift worth noting: annual security testing is over. With agentic AI moving at machine speed on both offense and defense, the new baseline is continuous testing — every few days.

East Ventures led a $7 million seed round for Amity Robotics, a company deploying AI in hotels, malls, and commercial properties. ArcBase, its voice-enabled AI concierge kiosk, is already live in 30+ properties across Singapore, UAE, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia — including hotels run by IHG, Accor, and Shangri-La. Next up is ArcMove, its first mobile robot. Thailand is a natural test market: unemployment sits below 1%, 33 to 36 million tourists are expected in 2026, and the country’s dense hotel and mall infrastructure means repetitive, multilingual customer interactions are constant. Amity Robotics is also a sister company to Amity, which raised a $100 million Series D and has deep ties to the CP Group, Thailand’s largest private company. That network gives the robotics business a commercial distribution edge that most hardware startups can’t replicate.

Craig has been investing in the region since 2018 — 105 companies, 13 cohorts. His read: later-stage capital has fallen sharply in Southeast Asia since the post-COVID bubble, but the ecosystem is more connected and sophisticated than ever. AI is opening up business models that couldn’t scale before, particularly in industrial workflow automation. One of his top performers, TransTrack, began in fleet telematics and is now moving into maritime and the Middle East by integrating AI into existing operations. His caution for founders: saying “we’re AI” in 2025 is like saying “we’re online” in 2005. The companies getting funded are the ones solving specific problems for customers who will actually pay.

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