The e-commerce battle is getting even hotter in Indonesia with many major players looking to take the top spot here. Who’s the latest entering the field? eBay. We spoke with Widi Nugroho, the CEO of news portal PlasaMSN (a joint venture between Telkom Indonesia and Microsoft) today, who revealed to us what eBay has in store for Indonesia. Widi also oversees the progress of Telkom’s other joint venture with eBay, the e-commerce site Plasa.com 1 – and that’s where the marketplace will be popping up.
Major e-commerce players like Kaskus, Tokopedia, ແລະ Rakuten should brace themselves to hear what Widi shared with us: eBay’s Plasa is going to launch its marketplace in Indonesia in one or two months’ time. And naturally, because it’s a joint venture with big-hitter eBay, the marketplace aims to be the number one consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-store in the country.
Since the partnership with Telkom Indonesia last year, a 20-man team from eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has been quietly developing the marketplace platform as well as doing research about the Indonesian market. In that year, Plasa’s been keeping afloat mostly with revenue from the B2B side of the business, rather than from B2C. The upcoming marketplace can definitely spark life into the joint-venture site.
Plasa’s marketplace won’t have auctions
What can we expect in the upcoming marketplace? Widi says that it can of course be used by consumers and businesses to sell their products online, but that eBay’s Plasa marketplace will not have the much-loved auction feature inside. Widi explains that based on their research, the auction feature isn’t actually suited to Indonesian users.
What makes the news even more interesting is that the country’s largest social forum, Kaskus, is going to launch its marketplace with eBay-like auctions later this year. Let’s see who’s right and who’s wrong.
Battle to be Indonesia’s number one
Other players looking to grab the top marketplace spot in Indonesia are Kaskus, Tokopedia, and Rakuten Belanja Online. Kaskus recently told us that its hasn’t spent a dime of the money raised from GDP Ventures back in 2011, and that it’s being saved to use in case eBay makes a huge move here. With eBay indeed making a big move in the nation, Kaskus might start using those funds this year.
Tokopedia, on the other hand, would like to position itself as being more like China’s Taobao rather than eBay – and we all know what was the result of eBay’s battle with Jack Ma’s Taobao in China. With consistent funding raised every year, will Tokopedia be able to replicate that feat?
Rakuten Belanja Online, an Indo-Japanese joint venture, is battling through a rumored split with joint partner MNC Group, but has since reinstated its focus on succeeding in Indonesia. The company even lets merchants use Rakuten’s cross border platform to sell their wares overseas.
How PlasaMSN fits in
During the conversation, Widi told us that PlasaMSN is recording higher traffic than the e-commerce compsection of Plasa at the moment. The former site boasts 2.5 million unique visitors, with 80 million page-views every month. Last year the portal site generated IDR 11 billion ($1.1 million) in revenue, and is now on track to record IDR 25 billion ($2.5 million) in revenue this year.
Those are quite good numbers considering that the site was still in beta mode in late 2011. The site’s business model is simple: it curates and aggregates content given by its 35 content providers, and then shares the revenue generated, such as from ads and product references. PlasaMSN was built to help promote the e-commerce venture, Plasa.
(Editing by Steven Millward and Anh-Minh do)