In the mid-January, DailySocial has written about the latest portfolio of East Ventures, namely Inapay and Jajalindo. In this article, we had this conversation (via emails) with Tommy Soependi – CEO and co-founder of Jajalindo.
One thing that makes me curious about Jajalindo is the establishment of this travel startup. Tommy explained that Jajalindo was established four months ago and according to Whois, the Jajalindo domain was active since October 10th, 2011 and released to the public on December 17th, 2011.
Tommy also introduced the people behind Jajalindo.com. Tommy Soependi as CEO, Antony Kusuma as VP Operations, Ronald Richy as COO, Dewi Marisa as a Designer, and Brian Japutra as Head of IT. Tommy added that, “We previously had experienced for three years as internet marketing and are now trying to explore the world tech business”.
So, what lies behind the establishment of Jajalindo? Tommy said that the background of Jajalindo is the desire to create a startup that is useful for local people and to spread the beauty and diversity of tourism in Indonesia in terms of nature, place, and culinary. “We help Indonesians to find suitable place for them”, said Tommy again.
“We have several categories; the information provided is also very specific starting from the site profile, the space information and our user’s experience that have been to these places. We also have communities that are tailored to the user “interest”. We actively interact with the user via social media, and certainly what “the most striking” is our members can play an active role in providing interesting places in Indonesia,” explained Tommy when explaining the differences between Jajalindo and other travel portals.
The members of Jajalindo are currently around 50,000 and continues growing. The number of Jajalindo pageviews reaches thousands each day but Tommy didn’t want to explain the specific number of pageviews.
So, what the changes/improvements after obtaining investment from East Ventures? “The better performance due to the usage of better website hosting, better acceleration of the website development, several new features, new ideas, advices from East Ventures and new network,” Tommy explained.
The challenges faced by Jajalindo is technical constraints and new features that takes quite some time to be implemented.
About future engagement, Tommy described, “Our next plan is going to explore more about beauty and diversity of Indonesia. Plunge into the world of commerce, improving the overall quality of the website, and new attractive features”.
Rama Mamuaya (from DailySocial) had explained at e27 Founders Drinks+StartupLokal Meetup some time ago, the startup he predicted will be booming this year (2012) is the travel segment. Danny Oei Wirianto (MindTalk.com – MerahPutih Inc.) at the same time also consider that they are looking for new portfolio in travel segment.
So, let’s looking forward for new surprises from Jajalindo!