Early Life
Kiwi Aliwarga is the President Commissioner of UMG IdeaLab, an Indonesia-based corporate venture capital and co-owner of UMG Myanmar. Born and bred in Jakarta, Kiwi began his professional career in business development at Astra International and United Tractors-Indonesia from early to mid-90s before founding UMG Myanmar in 1998 with his partner MarLar Win.
A passionate Indonesian technologist, Kiwi has set the ambitious goal of turning UMG into a billion-dollar regional conglomerate by 2021 by relying on three essential pillars – people, leadership, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.
He holds a BSc in industrial engineering from Institut Teknologi Indonesia, a MSc in engineering from Thailand’s Asia Institute of Technology and a MSc in System Dynamics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is currently completing his PhD in agriculture from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia.
UMG MYANMAR
UMG is an immerse group of companies that was founded in 1998 in Myanmar. Initially, we penetrated the local market in 1998 by trading generators and spare parts of heavy equipment. As the result of hard work and our benevolence, UMG gained trust of customers and 50% market share of the whole country within a few years and got market opportunities to expand our business into nine business sectors and more than 40 subsidiaries.
UMG is widely recognized as the largest distributor of agricultural tractors & trucks, power generators & industrial system, logistics, motorcycles, trucks and buses, remanufacturing, construction, concrete equipment and consumers’ goods. With over 50 branches throughout Myanmar and eight offices in seven Southeast Asian countries, UMG continuously grows into one of the leading businesses in Myanmar with over 3,000 workforce.
Our passion to build a meaningful business makes us one of the main pillars of Myanmar’s economic. Our values and cultures build us stronger. Our relentless pursuit of excellence resulted into our success and the loyalty of our customers and it also keeps us humble to grow further.
As a top notch business in Myanmar, we conduct our business in a way that is certain to prosper with the nation, Myanmar. Property and infrastructure activities are handled by UMG’s Dragon Power subsidy, which was formed in 2002 as a heavy-equipment rental company. It has since expanded into constructing roads and hydroelectric power plants.
The company’s mining division, created this year, operates gypsum, barite, jade, granite, marble, and gold mines. In the education and entertainment fields, UMG manages hotels and amusement parks, as well as UMG College, founded in 2011 and began opening doors in 2014. UMG also operates Win Food Co., Ltd., a subsidiary that manufactures snacks, wafers, and noodles, that is also looking to expand into other production area.
In July 2013, UMG Myanmar signed a joint venture agreement with Indonesia’s largest listed builder, PT Wijaya Karya, and announced plans to build a precast concrete factory in Myanmar, with an initial production of 27,000 metric tons per year.
From Myanmar to Indonesia
UMG Idealab’s story began in Myanmar as one of the subsidiaries of UMG Myanmar
Seeing the impressive growth of Southeast Asian tech industry, UMG Myanmar Founder Kiwi Aliwarga then initiated the founding of UMG Idealab.
UMG Idealab’s business lines are being divided into two parts: An incubator in Myanmar that helps startups begin their businesses, and a CVC in Indonesia that helps startups with seed funding investments.
Thru UMG Idelab, Mr.Kiwi also mentor young people to build startup that has vision to solve problems facing Indonesia next generation to come.
In Indonesia, apart from Aruna and Crowde, UMG Idealab has also invested in agritech startup MSMB, voice recognition platform Bahasakita, chatbot platform Botika, online book store Bukku, healthcare marketplace Prosehat, human capital management platform Netis, food products e-commerce platform Total Agri Mart, on-demand homecare service Perawatku, and air taxi service Frogs, which is currently under development.
In addition to Indonesia and Myanmar, the firm is also investing in start-ups in Thailand, Malaysia and China.