JAKARTA (Reuters) - Shares in Indonesia’s first listed tech unicorn, PT Bukalapak.com, surged nearly 25% on their trading debut on Friday as investors scrambled to get a piece of the country’s fourth-largest e-commerce company in a booming sector.The 11-year-old e-commerce company that counts Ant Group and Singapore sovereign fund GIC Pte Ltd among its backers, raised $1.5 billion in the Southeast Asian country’s biggest initial public offering (IPO). Bukalapak shares rose to 1,060 rupiah ($0.0738) after reaching the 25% limit, with tens of thousands of investors buying shares through online platforms such as Ajaib and Stockbit, while institutional investors also piled in. The listing has fuelled excitement in the startup and investment community and is expected to set the benchmark for IPO hopefuls in a region where global investors are chasing fast-growing e-commerce markets. “This event will create a snowballing effect and show the path for more Indonesia listings,” said Willson Cuaca, a co-founder and managing partner at East Ventures, an Indonesia-focused venture capital firm. The IPO comes as Indonesia’s $40 billion e-commerce market is getting a boost from stay-at-home consumers and a shift by more businesses to sell online in the pandemic. Bukalapak, which focuses on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises beyond top tier cities in Southeast Asia’s largest country and sprawling archipelago, ranks behind Tokopedia, Sea Ltd’s Shopee and Alibaba’s Lazada. “Bukalapak’s IPO shows that there is a large and vibrant market for homegrown Indonesian unicorns,” said Antonio Puno, head of Southeast Asia corporate finance at Bank of America, the joint global coordinators for the issue with UBS. Bukalapak increased its IPO size in multiple rounds and received roughly $6.5 billion of interest from institutional and retail investors. The retail part of the IPO was doubled to 5%. ($1 = 14,365.0000 rupiah)