Flokq Acquires Yukstay, Strengthens Position in Indonesia's "Co-living" Market

Flokq officially announces its acquisition of Yukstay, a service provider marketplace for rental of apartments and boarding houses of an undisclosed value. In an official statement to DailySocial, CEO Flokq Anand Janardhanan revealed, this acquisition will strengthen its position in the market co-living Indonesia and accelerate future business growth.

According to Anand, Yukstay already has advanced technological capabilities that have enabled Flokq to expand its business segment from provider co-living menjadi tech-driven property management company. This acquisition agreement is considered strategic considering that the long-term space rental market in Southeast Asia is estimated to reach $180 billion.

"We want to increase our user base in Indonesia, and not only from services co-living just. We want to expand our product by becoming full long term rental market platform to the Southeast Asian market in the next two years. With Yukstay technology, we can get started journey We're faster," he said.

For your information, Flokq was founded by Anand Janardhanan and Harmeet Singh in 2019 with a decade of experience building startups and global companies, such as Microsoft. Currently, Flokq has rented out more than 1.000 residential units in the segment mid to high in Indonesia with an average occupancy rate of above 95%, an Average Room Rate (ARR) of several million US dollars, and positive cash flow.

Meanwhile, Yukstay is a startup provider of co-living the first in Indonesia which focuses on residential apartments in Jakarta and Surabaya. Since its establishment in 2018, Yukstay has received a number of investments, including from Y Combinator, Insignia Ventures, Skystar Capital, Tanglin Venture Partners, and K3 Ventures.

Yukstay Co-founder & CEO Christopher Kung added that over the past 18 months, we have been building a platform that can simplify supply chains in the marketplace. real estate. Armed with its technology and data, Yukstay's agent partners can make better transactions. Likewise with development customer experience and property management.

"Joining Yukstay with Flokq will speed things up operating model pre-existing so that it can accommodate the needs housing which continues to increase," said Christopher.

Residential request co-living in times of pandemic

Anand acknowledged the request co-living had dropped dramatically due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, he believes that the residential market trend will increase again this year, in line with the increasing number of professionals doing Work From Home (WFH) in Indonesia.

According to him, this upward trend will be triggered by the flexibility of rental terms offered by residential owners in an uncertain market situation. With this discretion, residential co-living can be an attractive long-term alternative to boarding houses. Market co-living for millennials in Jakarta it is now estimated to be worth $2,1 billion, while in Southeast Asia it is estimated at $15,6 billion.

In Indonesia, proptech is one of the business verticals that has continued to grow over the last few years. The number of players began to mushroom by offering various business models, such as: listing property to residential rental with the concept co-living. 

Nevertheless, throughout 2020 growth proptech not as tight as other verticals, like ecommerce, edtech, and fintech. Social restrictions due to the pandemic have triggered a decline in property demand, whether it's buying houses or renting apartments and hotels. One of the significant impacts of this pandemic is the closure of the Airy Rooms hotel and lodging network platform.

From an investment perspective, referring to Startup Report 2020, only two startup proptech Indonesia received the funding, namely Jendela 360 and Yukstay. In that period, the property portal group Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG) acquires Lamudi Global, including for Lamudi in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico. With the uncertainty of the situation--although vaccines have now begun to be distributed--the potential for mergers and acquisitions proptech could happen again in 2021.