2014 was a pivotal year for Indonesia’s tech scene. Tech in Asia readers were innundated with news about SoftBank and Sequoia Capital’s record-breaking investment in Tokopedia, along with on-going scoops about Jakarta’s hackers protecting the presidential election with the public online vote counter Kawal Pemilu.
On the other hand, the government blocked Vimeo, Imgur, and Reddit, while also removing information technology studies from the local academic curriculum (then putting it back). Indonesia’s Bakrie Group invested US$25 million into Silicon Valley-based social network Path, while local media KapanLagi and Fimela merged to form the largest online media network in Indonesia.
But what about the bootstrapping startups that have been slogging away day-in and day-out this year? Surely they deserve some credit for not just surviving, but thriving in 2014. So, in no particular order, here are 10 bootstrapping startups in Indonesia that have gained notable traction or just have awesome ideas.
Hipwee
Hipwee is Indonesia’s social news site that produces list articles for the archipelago’s young urbanite demographic. Similar to BuzzFeed, Hipwee’s content covers entertainment, relationships, travel, and inspirational topics, most often accompanied by pictures and GIFs. The site’s founder Lauri Lahi claims Hipwee is clocking more than 3.3 million pageviews and over one million unique visits per month. The site launched in April but the company is not monetizing yet that we know of.
Mahoni
Mahoni is a Surabaya-based mobile app development firm that’s responsible for Southeast Asia’s most expensive digital law text library Themis Reader. The company has been around for several years, but to date has yet to announce a single hint of venture capital funding. The company is well-known for its variety of ereader apps and products, and Mahoni founder Ginting Sadtyono says the firm’s Buku Sekolah Elektronik (Electronic School Book) app serves more than 50 million users in Indonesia.
RumahDijual
RumahDijual is a website for property agents and homeowners to sell property, houses, land, and apartments in Indonesia’s major cities. Back in April, SimilarWeb estimated that the site was receiving close to one million visits per day, which was significantly more than its competitors Rumah123 and Rumah.com. The following month, RumahDijual recorded over 1.9 million visits, 900,000 unique visitors, and 11.5 million pageviews. The company earns money from ads, and founder Yohanes Aristianto credits the site’s traffic to an SEO friendly domain name (RumahDijual means “Home for Sale”).
Oomph
Oomph is an Indonesian mobile content distributor much like Google Play or Apple’s App Store. The key difference is that Oomph is localized and tailored just for the Indonesian market. The company is three years old already, and while it has kept a low profile until now, Oomph founder Stanley Tan says his product already has more than 4.5 million registered users in Indonesia. According to him, Oomph is getting more than 10,000 new users per day and should reach 10 million users by the end of next year. Oomph monetizes on a pay-per-download basis, but may also soon bring advertising into its store.
Zenius
Zenius is an online learning site that provides video content and exercises to elementary and senior high school students in Indonesia. Zenius is not the only edtech product in the archipelago, but it does seem to be doing well with more than 90,000 monthly users. The company has been around since the early days of 2007, which has given it ample time to develop. Zenius has built an archive of more than 20,000 educational videos and launched a website for Indonesians to learn English. In recent years, the company has been pulling in around US$500,000 in annual revenue.
Jualo
Jualo is an Indonesian ecommerce business that launched in January 2014. The site competes with players like OLX in Indonesia. The site lets users locate goods for sale that are just around the corner using a built-in GeoSearch tool. Jualo’s founder and CEO Chaim Fetter claims that in August, his site received nearly one million visitors, saw 40,000 listings posted, and facilitated US$5 million worth of sales. Fetter believes Indonesia has still only seen the tip of the local ecommerce iceberg this year.
PlazaKamera
PlazaKamera is an Indonesian ecommerce site that features everything related to cameras, including studio flashes, tripods, and selfie sticks, but ironically not the cameras themselves. Also based in Surabaya, the startup claims to already be bringing in US$81,000 in monthly revenue from a customer base of 50,000 to 60,000 visitors per month. 40 percent of them are return visitors while 60 percent are newcomers, according the site’s founder and CEO Rico Satria Chandra.
JalanTikus
Jalan Tikus is a website that features three main download categories: apps for desktop PC and Android, games, and readable app-related content. All downloadable content are licensed as freeware, open source, and shareware. It is all legal and free for download. Tech in Asia’s most recent data shows that since its inception in June 2012, Jalan Tikus has facilitated over 10 million downloads to more than six million unique users. The site gets more than 1.3 million monthly pageviews and already has between 500,000 to one million monthly active users, according to founder Weihan Liew.
1CAK
1CAK is a Bandung-based Indonesian humor site similar to 9gag. The portal offers silly jokes and memes that are hyper localized for an Indonesian audience. In February, founder Aji Ramadhan claimed the site had nine million pageviews per month from about 560,000 unique visitors. Ramadhan added that 1CAK is a profitable company, currently supporting itself on Google AdSense alone.
Nonton
Nonton is a site that allows Indonesians to watch and upload video content, not unlike YouTube. The site has been live since October 2013 and now, one year later, it has around 45,000 videos available to stream. Since it began promoting itself in January, Nonton has gathered a daily average of over 70,000 visitors and more than 300,000 pageviews. The site has more than 40,000 registered users who watch over 50,000 videos per day. Nonton aims to make money through in-stream video advertising and banner ads on the website.
Editing by Terence Lee and Paul Bischoff; lead image from Jayel Aheram.
This post Indonesia’s top 10 bootstrapping startups of 2014 appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Indonesia’s top 10 bootstrapping startups of 2014
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