Lakuuu Presents Integrated Services to Help MSMEs Enter the Online Market

Targeting SMEs, lakuuu offer solutions all-in-one for creating business websites and digital marketing. Founded by Cynthia Tulus Makmud (CEO) together with two colleagues, namely Andry Tjiajadi and Hendrawan Harjanto, they have a mission to simplify the process of moving MSMEs to digital platforms by building their own promotion and sales sites.

After 2020 the company focused on developing features to gathering early-stage users, this month Lakuuu officially does grand launch to the public. Since launching, there have been more than 4000 MSME partners from all over Indonesia who have joined.

"Lakuu was founded in the midst of a pandemic. So far, the effects of the pandemic that we have felt are the number of MSME businesses offline who wants go-digital, so that our target market also expands. From only targeting MSMEs courses become a SME online and offline. 30% of all our users are based on offline and never had a platform online before," said Cynthia.

Although there are currently many platforms that offer similar services like Lakuuu, in particular they claim to have significant differences. By providing a platform all-in-one, which means users don't need to integrate or add Plugin back into their site, because all services have been provided holistically.

Plugin what is meant here is for product settings, content management, payments, postage calculations, and even package pick-up services. Other platforms usually add additional costs/time-consuming processes if users want to have these features on their website.

Seeing the increasing number of MSME actors who use the channel marketplace as official store, Lakuuu also provides digital marketing consulting services for various sales channels.

"We believe that marketplace, social media and websites have different functions and added value for users. All three need to be managed optimally to help business development. Lakuuu always provides this understanding to potential users, so that the management of all platforms is carried out according to their functions," said Cynthia.

Action Plan for 2022

After inaugurating its presence, Lakuuu presents many new features to increase the quality of service and make it easier for users merchant. Among them is a new dashboard design that is simpler and easier to operate.

"Lakuu provides a free trial period of 2 months for each user, then followed by a subscription period if the user wants to continue activating their website. We think the free trial period of 2 months is more than enough for users to fill out their website and try to operate or sell via web," said Cynthia.

The number of Lakuuu users has grown by more than 200% in the last 3 months. This year, they also recorded a GMV of almost Rp1 billion. In the future, Lakuuu plans to collaborate with several parties who have the same mission to digitize Indonesian MSMEs to achieve an 8-10x increase in GMV next year.

The company also has plans to conduct a series A fundraising phase in 2022. Previously, Lakuuu had received initial funding from a number of companies angel investors and funds belonging to the founders.

"In 2022, Lakuuu wants to enrich the products and services it offers, especially in the digital marketing. Lakuuu will form an ecosystem with services fintech and creative industries in Indonesia, so that our users can connect with the right connections to develop their business from various aspects, from finance, procurement, sales, to product marketing," said Cynthia.

Growth e-commerce enablers in Indonesia

Startups e-commerce enablers providing AZ digital strategy services (end-to-end) to other business units that want to sell their products online online. The range of services offered include content production, page creation on marketplace, website creation, marketing execution, sales channel integration online, to delivery of products to customers.

According to data from the KemenkopUKM, the number of MSMEs 'go digital' in Indonesia has increased by 99% compared to the period before the pandemic. MSMEs that adapt digitally have increased to 15,9 million or 24,9% of the total 65 million MSME actors. Previously, in Indonesia there were only about 8 million digitally connected MSMEs.

To help business people go digital, Currently there are several platforms available for the local market, such as aCommerce, SIRCLO, 8Commerce, JetCommerce and Anchanto.

Menurut report DSInnovate titled "MSME Empowerment Report 2021", from the survey results, one of the most significant problems is marketing and selling their products. This condition becomes relevant for e-commerce enabler players, because the main goal of the solution is to solve these pain points. Coming to the online realm will also provide market expansion for SMEs themselves.