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Indonesia’s large population and growing Internet use will draw tech entrepreneurs to expand their business here, an investment manager says.

James Chan, a Singapore-based investment manager at Neoteny Labs, said Indonesia showed similar patterns in its Internet-based business development as two other large Asian markets, China and India.

For Singapore-based tech entrepreneurs, he said, Indonesia is the most sensible choice as it is the largest Southeast Asian country with a large user base for its national language. Singapore, on the other hand, has a small population and a mature market.

“Outside of the Silicon Valley in the US, every other country is still figuring out how to build their Internet start-up ecosystems,” Chan told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

Neoteny Labs is a venture capital group that provides seed funding for potential Web start-ups in Asia and the Middle East.

Reports from global consulting companies and Facebook, one of the world’s most popular social networking sites, echoed Chan’s view on the prospects of Internet-based businesses in Indonesia.

A Boston Consulting Group report in September 2010 showed Indonesians were among the world’s most avid users of social networking sites. More than 31 million of the country’s 238 million people use the Internet, a figure expected to increase to 94 million by 2015, it said.

According to Facebook data, Indonesia is the second-largest market for the company with more than 35 million active accounts, about 5.6 percent of total Facebook members.

International social media monitoring agency Sysomos reported in January that Indonesia was the sixth-largest Twitter user in the world and the largest user in Asia.

Straits Times Indonesia reported on Sunday that Eduardo Saverin, one the co-founders of Facebook, had urged tech entrepreneurs in Singapore to capitalize on their proximity to the world’s largest-growing Internet markets of China, India and Indonesia.

Speaking at a dinner event organized by the National University of Singapore, Saverin said there would be more than 1.2 billion Internet users among Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia by 2015, up from about 700 million today.

Saverin has lived in Singapore for more than a year. After falling out with Facebook co-founder and Harvard schoolmate Mark Zuckerberg, Saverin has been on the hunt for interesting projects.

Reports support the view that Indonesia’s Web start-up scene has flourished in the last year. Internet giant Yahoo acquired Indonesian site Koprol last year. When Yahoo bought the company in May, it said it was attracted by Koprol’s services and potential for growth.

Satya Witoelar, the co-founder and chief creative officer of Koprol, said Yahoo was among many suitors, “but Yahoo was the most capable of taking Koprol to a higher level.” Since then, its user base has grown to more than 1.5 million people.

Another US-based company, Groupon, acquired Indonesian Web start-up Disdus last month to expand its business in Southeast Asia. Disdus, an online coupon site, was created by two Indonesian graduates from US colleges who started the company less than a year ago.

Another company that offers a similar service, Dealkeren, received 2 million euros ($2.9 million) in investment from German company Rebate Networks in November.

Danny Oei Wirianto, marketing chief of Darta Media Indonesia, which owns Kaskus, Indonesia’s largest online forum, said he believed the Internet ecosystem “will continue to grow in the coming year.”

Kaskus, which has more than 2.7 million members, has announced it will become a “social-commerce” site by partnering with Global Digital Prima, a company founded less than a year ago by Djarum Group. Its aim is 35 million monthly unique visitors, up from 22 million today, and reaching at least 75 percent of Internet users in Indonesia.

Facebook Cofounder Urges Singaporean ‘Technopreneurs’ to Focus on Indonesia