Quantcast
Channel: »ໂທລະ​ສັບ​ມື​ຖື
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 102

Infokost Plans to be the Agoda for Indonesian Boarding Houses

$
0
0
infokost1

Indonesia has big players like Rumah123 ແລະ Rumah as house renting sites. But for boarding houses, we have Infokost.net. It’s from the Merah Putih Incubator and has been running for three years now.

Infokost’s main focus is to answer people’s needs for boarding houses in seven cities across Indonesia; Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Malang, Surabaya, Bali, and Semarang. Claiming to be the number one site for boarding house listings, one of Infokost’s upcoming plans is to be the Agoda for exclusive boarding houses.

We talked to Infokost CEO Frandy Wirajaya Sugianto to get insight into what the company is doing right now. The team has been building and partnering with around 30 databases of exclusive boarding houses around Jakarta area and it is going to provide premium services to both owners and future occupants who want to rent only on a daily basis. This is also a slick monetization scheme since Infokost acts as a product listings site and never handles any payment transactions.

Infokost is currently upgrading its website to support the plan and there’s a banner on the homepage that will redirect users to a new page exclusively for its daily boarding house listings. Frandy is excited with the new business strategy because Infokost has around 9,000 users with more than 10,000 web visitors per day. He sees a potential market of workers who travel for work from outside Jakarta. These workers aren’t willing to pay an expensive price by staying at a hotel so they can go to Infokost and find something in a lower price range. In addition, there is also a growing market of daily-rented exclusive boarding houses, 200 to date.

Infokost also wants to engage with its users offline, so the company likes to organizes offline gathering events for its community, named Kostmo Klub. Kostmo Klub serves as part of Infokost’s other upcoming plans which is to create an online forum community dedicated to Kostmo Klub members.

We also met with Michael Ferdinand, head of sales and marketing, who told us about the mobile version of the site. It has a “nearby” feature that gives users the location of boarding houses near their current location. After the regular website is completed, Infokost will revamp the mobile version and add a “point of interest” feature that can show you the location of restaurants, universities, etc. For now, Infokost has collaborated with BCA bank and you can find their ATMs on the map. Infokost has launched its apps for Windows Phone 7 and 8, Nokia Asha, ແລະ Nokia S40. Apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry (non-BB 10) are coming soon.

In addition to boarding houses, Infokost also covers apartments, villas, and house listings that can be rented monthly or yearly. With almost 20,000 listings for boarding houses alone, it’s not going to be a burden anymore for university students and workers to find a suitable place to live.

When asked about competitors, Frandy and Michael mentioned SewaKost ແລະ InfoKost (this is infokost.com). In my opinion, Infokost.net has a better interface and offers more features than the two competitors. We’ll see how the team executes all its upcoming plans.

On an interesting sidenote, I was surprised when I opened the website for the first time because of its “naughty” introductory image. I asked Frandy about this and he answered that it means something naughty but positive. I wonder how can it be naughty and positive at the same time? Check it out.

infokost2

(Editing by Anh Minh Do)


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 102