Indonesia’s online city directory space is still up for grabs. There’s yet to be a really strong player in the scene like Yelp. Even Urbanesia – which back then was the city directory – has been trying to rediscover itself. The latest player to take on the challenge is WeYap, and they have received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Mountain SEA Ventures to run up the hill.
“WeYap is a social platform that helps people discover and share local businesses in Indonesia,” says cofounder Kelly Oktavian. It currently has close to 15,000 entries to places like restaurants, shops, and spas in Jakarta and its surrounding areas. The team plans to expand its directory to other big cities in the long run.
The duo plans to monetize through traditional display advertising. Businesses can also spend money on targeted keyword searches within the WeYap platform. On top of that, merchants can also pay for premium business accounts which will let them customize and enhance their business profile pages.
Oktavian believes that there’s still space for online directory sites like WeYap. “Indonesians are constantly ‘plugged in’ (spending eight to nine hours online), they are social media savvy, and love sharing things,” he adds, “when it comes to user-review sites right now in Indonesia, they only cover restaurants. However Indonesians are spending almost equally as much on shopping, health and beauty, and nightlife.”
See: This Indonesian app makes old-school store catalogs accessible again with filters and search
The site was beta launched on 18 August this year, one day after Indonesia’s independence day. It is co-founded by Teresa Lin and Oktavian. Lin, an MBA graduate from New York University, has previously worked in marketing at companies like MGM Studios and Take 2 Interactive. Oktavian in the other hand held marketing and business development roles at local tech companies like Bhinneka and iPaymu.
Besides WeYap, Mountain SEA Partners has also made investments in company review site for employees Qerja, financial comparison startup CekAja, discounts discovery app Dealoka, and digital performance consultancy firm YDigital.
WeYap’s competition in Indonesia include Urbanesia, IsiKota, and Zodio.
The post With seed money secured, WeYap thinks the battle to be Indonesia’s Yelp is wide open appeared first on Tech in Asia.
With seed money secured, WeYap thinks the battle to be Indonesia’s Yelp is wide open
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