Discussing Business Strategy and Startup Growth Metrics a la LinkAja

Running a business in this uncertain situation is certainly not easy. Because there are many changes that occur and require companies to be able to adapt quickly. Haryati Lawidjaja as CEO of LinkAja admits his company had slipped when social restrictions were everywhere; and the transportation sector, one of LinkAja's strongest segments, was forced to reduce operations.

This does not necessarily make the team discouraged, it actually generates creativity to be able to come up with solutions that can bridge the problems that occurred at that time. In line with the focus of the company who wants to work on the transaction market related to daily essential needs for cities tier 2 and 3, LinkAja decided to initiate the digitization of traditional markets in Indonesia.

Fey's early career

Starting a career as financial auditors, Haryati or who is familiarly called Fey found that a lot of new technologies were born in the telecommunications industry. After trying out several companies, he chose to anchor at LinkAja to build a digital payment solution to improve the quality of life of the Indonesian people.

Running a startup business under the auspices of a BUMN is a challenge for LinkAja. Startup culture is often considered unfriendly to government bureaucracy. On the one hand, startup is synonymous with speed and agility, it includes the individual as well as the system. Bureaucracy, although often seen as inefficient, actually serves a good purpose. As long as both objectives are achieved, there is no need for a long and rambling process. The challenge is how to balance agility and bureaucracy.

"Startup is an organization that prioritizes creation and innovation, while corporations have their own advantages in terms of scaling up and sustainability. I tried to combine the two. What did I learn about sustainability, along with complementary teams. We are trying so that the current creations/innovations can be scale up and sustain' said Fey.

The ideal growth metric

There are many things that can be used to measure the growth of a company, and it can be different for each sector. In general, there are two main metrics that can be used as a reference for startups, in terms of business and product. Fey revealed that in the early stages, growth is usually measured in terms of quantity or volume, such as total active users, GDP, GMV and so on to see the effectiveness of the strategy used.

As a company's strategy matures, its metrics will begin to penetrate qualitative areas, such as lifetime value. How users assess the company's performance is one of the most influencing factors. Loyalty becomes a real asset. Although it cannot be denied, revenue become an essential aspect in measuring the company's growth. "However, we should not be trapped by volume alone," said Fey.

Regarding products, LinkAja as a company with customer-centric values, admits that his team focuses on solutions first than products. Not that it's negligent, but when you have a target market of people in tier 2 and 3 cities, technology will be nothing if it's not a solution. "If it's okay to talk about advanced products, people won't understand and get scared first," he said.

One of the keys to growth is also collaboration. Fey believes that collaboration can create great opportunities infinite or infinity. In addition, this can also be done to accelerate the company's business growth without having to add additional funds resource and on the one hand save cost. For him, competition has become obsolete, now collaboration will be left behind.

Marketing strategy

Talking about marketing or marketing, there are still misconceptions that often occur. One of them, many still think that advertising is marketing, though it is only a small part. Marketing is how to reach the right consumers with the right approach at the right time. To be able to achieve this, we must know who the target is, what needs, and then create the right solution.

It is better for the company from the beginning to have determined its vision, mission and focus, in the case of LinkAja, the majority of the middle to lower tiers. Then identify their difficulties, in this case there is access to limited information. Before developing a solution, it is advisable to conduct in-depth research. Pay attention to what media they often see, for example Facebook then set it as a channel. Currently, social media is a people based marketing which allows different approaches to different target markets. In addition, relevance becomes important for digital marketing effective and efficient.

In terms of user acquisition, there is no standardsacred' because each industry has a different market. In addition, what is no less important than attracting users is to maintain them. Startups in the early stages will have different strategies from those in advanced stages. One thing for sure is that everything has to be monitored and improved.

One of the advantages of digital platforms is that all activities have a footprint. There are lots of analyzes that can be done. Related conversion rate, all will return to the data. Always use data. Conversion rate and user retention are two things that require continuous learning. There is no single pill that can solve all of them, because as situations change, eating habits change too.

Smart investing

One of the popular strategies for attracting users and retaining them is with "burn money". According to Fey, we must first straighten out the definition of "burn money". He considered, this strategy is needed in terms of investment. Indonesia is growing and we need to invest as capital to win the next stage.

It's different with predatory marketing. For him, this objective "burn money" strategy does not educate users. It's not that promotion isn't important, but it's not everything. He advised businesses to set limits regarding this "burn money" strategy from the start. Define success and failure KPIs and make sure the objectives are clear.

As previously explained, data becomes a very valuable investment. From there it can be recommended what kind of services are needed and the company's movements can be more focused. One example smart investment is on data analytics. The data itself, even though there is a lot of it, will be useless if it can't be processed and presented insight.