Indonesia has become one of the biggest rising Asian markets in terms of technology as of late. Google launching its own YouTube division was a start over on the social and business aspects of things, but we are now starting to see some acquisitions and investments being made from leading Asian markets that see its potential. Japanese gaming giant GREE is no stranger towards making big moves to expand its presence especially in the last two years, but now they see some interest in the rising market that is Indonesia. Their first move is teaming up with Sony’s So-net to invest on e-commerce startup Pricearea. So-net is an internet provider subsidiary for Sony that has similar interests to GREE as far as investing in Pricearea is concerned. Pricearea has only been around for nearly two years, but the funding by both companies is in the millions according to CEO Andry Suhaili. GREE’s potential purpose for investing in the startup is to improve their e-commerce and online retail integration to their mobile gaming platform, which 230 million users worldwide are registered.

This investment by two of Japan’s top companies does say a lot about Indonesia that if there is any potential market out there for expansion, they will quickly snatch it for themselves before other companies and firms follow suit. Their Internet and mobile percentages are rapidly increasing, so it is indeed a good time to see which Indonesian startup or established company to ready to take things to the next level. E-commerce is also becoming a bigger topic in the gaming industry especially where sales are going more on a digital approach than going to retail stores. The Indonesian e-commerce space for instance will get a net gain of $266 million in transactions and expect that number to triple by 2014. Pricearea getting big supporters from Japan will help increase the number of people purchasing online at Indonesia in the next months and years. Even though GREE and So-net’s investment in the startup is currently only for Indonesia, Pricearea hopes to expand their presence in other Southeastern Asian countries in the future.