Kudo Plans Regional Expansion and Aims for Four Million Agents by 2021

Kudo revealed plans to expand to Southeast Asia to develop the traditional warung business in the next two years. This discourse is in harmony with Kudo direct relationship with Grab who are referred to as the leading regional players.

"For up to a year to two years, we want to develop Kudo for the Indonesian market because this is the biggest market. But for regional plans there must be because we are part of Grab as the biggest player in Southeast Asia," explained Co-Founder & CEO Agung Nugroho, Thursday (27/6).

Agung refused to discuss details about the plan. However, in the same period, he continued, the company plans to double the number of agents, from 2 million to 4 million agents. The company will target outside Java, because it is considered that there are not many options for developing a business other than opening a traditional warung.

This condition is considered to create opportunities Kudo much bigger to advance the shop so that it is versatile because it is assisted by technology. The condition is different compared to in Java. The opportunity to develop a business is much bigger, you don't have to just open a shop.

"From this condition, we realize that technology has a big role to play in helping warungs to sell anything. They also have competitiveness when compared to modern retailers."

The company also continues to develop features for warung agents so that they can be more 'sophisticated'. Although not specifically explained, these features will later be designed to increase agent income, operational efficiency, and provide working capital.

"We were founded from the beginning to build a traditional warung, so we continue to consistently develop features that are useful for helping their business."

It is hoped that the features that will be released in the third quarter of this year will slowly encourage Kudo agents to be more active in selling. Of the two million agents, only hundreds of thousands of them are active every month.

Kudo's five year achievements

At the same time, Supreme revealed a number of achievements Kudo since it was first established in 2014. The number of agents is currently growing 44% year on year. The highest growth occurred in Aceh, Bengkulu, Central Kalimantan, Gorontalo, and West Sumatra.

In terms of transactions, it is claimed to grow 132% for the same period. Throughout Ramadan 2019 alone, the transactions that agents use the most are credit, utilities, sending money, products supermarket, coupons and voucher.

Kudo's latest innovation is shopping for stall sales stock (wholesale) directly from the application. Agents do not need to leave the house to get their stock because it will be delivered directly by Kudo partners the next day.

The service, which has been released since October 2018, is available in more than 20 cities and regencies in Indonesia. Kudo takes advantage of partnerships in each region to provide stock of goods and cooperates with startups for delivery.

Then, in May 2019 the company became a strategic partner with BNI to provide a money transfer feature through Kudo agents for people who do not have access to finance in the regions. In this case, the Kudo agent is also the LKD agent for BNI.

To become a Kudo agent, all you have to do is show your identity and prove the shop is in accordance with what they reported in the application. Those who manage to become agents are allowed to join the agency services of other players.

"Competition in the shop sector is indeed interesting, but we are already part of the ecosystem Grab. This is what makes us different and stronger. Moreover, from the start, the ecosystem that we have built is end to end for stalls only," concluded Agung.

In addition to Kudo, other players who also enliven this realm are Mitra Bukalapak, Mitra Tokopedia, Kioson, Paytren, Payfazz, and others.