Get to know the Spotgue App, Help Transform Malls with Technology

The end of the year is the right time to be able to travel with family. One of the places that can be used to spend time together with many choices of activities is a shopping center or mall. Visitors have many choices of activities ranging from o shopping, restaurant, supermarket, gym, and others. However, the density of visitors at the mall leaves problems, such as limited parking space or limited places to eat fully booked.

Seeing this problem, Founder & CEO Gerry Hasang Spotgue together with several friends from Tarumanagara University alumni took the initiative to develop a solution that combines technology and mall lifestyle to create a unique experience. Spotgue allows visitors, tenant, and the mall interact directly real-time and integrated or what is referred to as "Mall 4.0 Experience".

"Technology-based reservation systems are a solution in crowded conditions where visitors can make reservations or waiting list through the application and see the status of the queue and when called, get a notification on their cellphone," said Gerry.

The Spotgue application will help mall visitors to see the availability of car park areas, mark parking positions, get recommendations from virtual assistants, make a reservation/waiting list favorite restaurants and services. In addition, users can also place food orders at restaurants (dine in) in a manner contactless, find various information related to coupons and discounts, as well as interact directly with malls and shops tenant.

From a business model perspective, Spotgue provides various features basic which can be used by the first 15 malls for free and can be used by all tenant. In addition, this platform also offers paid premium features that provide analytical reports related to the behavior and preferences of visitors or consumers as material for mall evaluation.

Gerry also revealed, "As for we really respect the privacy of visitors, so that all data analytics nature aggregates and no personal data is provided. For example, the composition of visitors to mall A consists of men and women, age range, domicile, store preferences, etc."

The free offer was given considering the pandemic conditions that had hit the retail industry. The hope is that this solution can help the retail business recover. "That's why we provide quotas for the first 15 malls in each region. Jabodetabek has a quota of 8 malls, while Bandung, Surabaya, Central Java/Jogja, Bali, Medan, and 2 other cities that pioneered each get a quota of 1 mall," added Gerry .

Spotgue targets malls of size medium-high along with all tenant and regular visitors in it. This agreement is official partnership, so that when the mall has decided to cooperate, all tenants will immediately be able to benefit.

Currently, the acquisition strategy used by Spotgue is to offer to malls and corporate groups, given the large number of groups that have malls in various regions. For example, Living World is in Alam Sutera, also in Pekanbaru, and Living Plaza is already present in various regions.

Soft launch

Last November, Spotgue held a soft launch at Artha Gading Mall and Living World Alam Sutera. This is the result of the shared vision of the company and the mall that in the future, mall visitors should be able to experience such an experience. His team has also tried to cooperate with several other malls.

On public preview With this, visitors can access various features in the Spotgue application, ranging from product information and tenant promotions, ongoing activities or events, information on all facilities available for visitors to features to view parking availability. "The goal is for the convenience and comfort of visitors to get all information related to the Alam Sutera Living world." explained Adrian Pranata, General Manager of Living World Alam Sutera.

Regarding the verification and integration processWithemu merchant already included in the Spotgue app based on data compiled by Mal. However, basic information such as location, type, or name is usually not enough for visitors who want more, such as promo info, latest products, discounts, events and so on. This must be managed dynamically.

Spotgue has 3 types of applications: Spotgue Visitor, Spotgue Tenant, and Spotgue Building (for mall managers). Through the function of each application, the process of updating information from tenant no longer centralized to the mall, but can be done independently and distributed by each one tenant.

Spotgue also supports the system group of tenants, so that tenant or sellers from the same group can do mirror content from one of the outlets in the group and visitors will see the same information in all other outlets. In an effort to achieve this, the Spotgue team must carry out socialization, training, assist the process setup at over 700 tenant from these malls.

Mall transformation 4.0

The modern retail industry is one of the sectors that has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of the national players recorded a decline in performance throughout 2020. This includes local retail players whose outlets are still in a few areas. Not even a few of the local modern retailers were forced to close some or even all of their outlets due to unfavorable economic conditions.

Gerry revealed that one of the goals of developing this platform was to support the President's vision of transforming the retail industry. His party is also trying to build collaborations with APPBI (Association of Indonesian Shopping Center Management) and HIPPINDO (Indonesian Shopping Center Tenants Association) to be able to contribute and support the transformation of more malls.

One of the interesting things to discuss regarding the 4.0 mall transformation is the virtual assistant feature offered by Spotgue. This feature is called Ask Alice, which builds a recommendation system for either gifts, food or clothes. As virtual assistants, Ask Alice was developed internally by the Spotgue team consisting of the best students in the Information Technology department at Tarumanagara University.

"However, at this early stage, Alice does not know the specific preferences and behavior of the user. Once she has enough data, then we can teach it to produce recommendations that are more personal and relevant," said Gerry.

In terms of funding, currently Spotgue is still using the bootstrap scheme from shareholders beginning. Later, to support expansion to various cities and a larger number of malls, the team will look for investor partners and venture capitalists who can support this vision.

"We have a big dream, to be able to expand our service coverage throughout Indonesia, Asia, and even the world. Our current target is to support the transformation of at least 25-50 malls in the next 1 to 2 years," said Gerry.