HandyMantis uses chat apps as the backbone of its motorcycle courier service in Indonesia

HandyMantis founder Ahmad Fathi Hadi.

People have started to notice the potential of Indonesia’s immense motorcycle taxi (ojek) population. Several local tech players have already recreated Uber’s business model with the nation’s ojek drivers. However, 24-year-old Ahmad Fathi Hadi’s Jakarta-based motorcycle startup is not the same as local ride service Go-Jek, which zeroes in on transportation. While Hadi’s company HandyMantis does offer ojek rides, its main bread and butter is in courier and personal delivery services.

“Currently we’re focusing on the courier service because it has a very big local market demand,” says Hadi. “Our major customers are small-to-medium-sized businesses. There are more than 60 million of these businesses in Indonesia that need our service on a daily basis.” HandyMantis delivers normal stuff like files and documents, but it also tackles a variety of tough-to-handle items. These include but are not limited to meals, drinks, pastries, and other things that need to be kept hot or cold.

Hadi says his company is unique because of its versatility. “Since food, drinks, and cake must all be handled with care, businesses and individuals cannot use standard or regular logistic services. They need to use a specialized courier service like HandyMantis,” explains Hadi.

See: Klik-Eat on scaling the food delivery business in Indonesia

Customers who want to have HandyMantis deliver stuff to their home or business need only call or email the company, but according to Hadi, most of HandyMantis’s business comes from popular chat apps like WhatsApp, Blackberry Messenger, and Line. HandyMantis does not yet have its own mobile app, as Hadi says he’ll need investment to expand capacity in Jakarta and the surrounding metro area. However, the site alone is already pulling in 150 deliveries per day.

HandyMantis’s prices can be based on distance travelled, time needed to execute a delivery, the nature of the order, or the number of orders HandyMantis has in its queue at a given moment. A rate of Rp 3,700 (US$0.30) per kilometer can apply to delivery and ojek services. For ojek service only, customers also have the option to pay based on travel time, which is Rp 64,000 (US$5.13) per hour. If HandyMantis has a long queue at the time of order, the rate is subject to go down to Rp 21,000 (US$1.68) for every half hour of travel time. HandyMantis pulled in more than Rp 70 million (US$5,612) in revenue last month, according to Hadi, who did not comment of the company’s profitability.

HandyMantis competes with other local courier firms like Kemuning Express, Kurir Jakarta, and SaceExpress. Hadi says the service runs on-demand, so when someone orders, HandyMantis can guarantee delivery anywhere in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi in two hours or less. The company launched back in November 2013 and now employs a small full-time fleet of drivers. HandyMantis is a bootstrapped operation, but Hadi admits receiving a small investment from his family to start up a little more than two years ago. He says:

We need investors who are interested in this service and the future. We have many plans for HandyMantis. Since it’s primarily a courier service right now, we are already expanding to other businesses spaces […] Next, we will build a food marketplace in Indonesia for SMBs. So the future is not only in our courier service.

Hadi describes himself as a serial entrepreneur, having also built several other websites that range from personal catering and premium dog food to “humans-as-a-service” and even an ecommerce for pest poison in Indonesia. Tech in Asia is following up on these companies to learn more.

Find out more about HandyMantis on Techlist. 

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HandyMantis uses chat apps as the backbone of its motorcycle courier service in Indonesia