Learning From Five Years Journey of My Home's Property Marketplace Service in the Indonesian Startup Landscape

In the midst of increasingly hectic competition in the online property site business due to the emergence of many new players and the arrival of international players to Indonesia, the site my house.com still able to survive since 2010 was born. Five years have passed, and now there are 63 team members ready to continue to grow the business. On one occasion, DailySocial had the opportunity to talk with one of the Co-founders of Rumahku.com, Rudi Saputra, to explore tips for success in surviving in an online business that is heating up.

Question (T): Now that online business in Indonesia's startup landscape is getting busier, discussing specifics to property sites has also sprung up in Indonesia, what are the tips for Rumahku.com so that it can always exist?

Answer (J): The key is in our personalized service and our commitment to always maintain the quality of content/advertising. Rumahku.com is probably the only property portal that does manuals approval for every advertisement that comes in, indeed it requires Yago's defensive effort and extra costs even often customer service we receive insults from users who do not receive their ads rejected because the quality of the ads is not good and does not meet our standards. but this is the price we pay to keep our content/ad quality commitments high. An example of a low-quality ad is a house ad that displays an image of land, as well as duplicate ads by the same seller. Although it looks like it needs more effort, Rumahku.com has built a good system so that Quality Control with Cost Efficiency works in synergy.

Q: One of the pillars of business resilience is financial health, how is Rumahku.com's monetization strategy?

A: We currently have two monetization strategies, the first is to sell membership paid for property agents and also ads . The second is with premium services for our partners, these services are special signature from Rumahku.com as well as being grand plan we will change the style of play marketplace portal in Indonesia, especially in the property sector.

Q: Five years in the local online world, how is the dynamics of technological development felt by Rumahku.com?

A: The most noticeable development is the increasing number of international players entering and also foreign investors who have invested in large amounts over the last three years to Indonesia. In addition, the development of mobile users has been phenomenal in the last two years and has dominated desktop users.

Q: What was the most memorable challenge during Rumahku.com?

A: The most memorable challenge was when Rumahku.com had to face a price war with international players who had very large or even unlimited funding. At that time, the price war was a stage "pressure test" the biggest for us founder, but by continuing to innovate and differentiate products, work hard and of course with the permission of the Almighty, now Rumahku.com has succeeded in overcoming these challenges.

Q: Talking about the vision and achievement targets, what do you want to pursue this year? Good for product innovation or market expansion.

A: Rumahku.com's target for 2015-2016 is that we can successfully hold fund raising for the first time. Why only now? In my opinion, Rumahku.com has been in the comfort zone for a long time. As I said before, we have a big plan that will involve many parties both vertically and horizontally, and we believe the impact of this strategy will change the marketplace game in Indonesia (especially in the property sector).

We are also expanding our marketing network infrastructure to the largest cities in Indonesia. Rumahku.com hopes that, by finding the right partner, we will be able to expand better and faster.

Q: Finally, for startup partners, especially those who are still in the early stages, are there any special tips to have a long-lasting startup?

A: There are two tips from me for startup partners, namely:

• Pay more attention to your product In today's era of intense competition, you may not be the first inventor of the product, but you can still be successful as long as your product can be useful in solving user problems. And don't create too many new products, but focus and develop your superior product.
• Pay more attention to your team Startups will not survive without a solid team so create a good HR system early on. Why? Because today's intense competition is not only product or promotion but also recruitment. Companies with large capital will not hesitate to ask for the best talent in your business, apart from needs, they also aim to weaken competitors.