Lapar.com announced that they are now available for Surabaya. From their founder’s Tweet, Firman, Lapar.com is now officially provides discounts from dining merchants for Surabaya.

As covered previously in DailySocial, the expansion is one of Lapar.com’s strategy, where before they only covered Jakarta and Bandung, now they also cover Surabaya. This will enable promo seekers to use Lapar.com’s service in those three major cities.

Previously Lapar.com also released a new facility, payment integration with KlikBCA. Lapar.com also has MakanPlus, some kind of portal used for providing culinary information and also act to build their community called ‘pejuang lapar’ (hungry warriors).

What interests me from Lapar.com is their service is targeted, which means they specifically choose to serve food daily deals. I hope they remain this way and stay focus on food segment, no need to reach for other segments because the competition is getting tougher, and it’s only a matter of time before Groupon officially enters Indonesia.

Another thing Lapar.com can develop is community, and they’re doing it by developing MakanPlus facility. One of the thing that groupon clone should pay attention to is the difference in behavior and market condition between Groupon’s ‘original country’ and Indonesia. Other than that at least there are two other factors daily deals provider should pay attention to, merchant and customers.

Merchant needs visitors and visitors/customers need discounts, and discount will happen after quota is fulfilled. MakanPlus’ facility becomes one of the ways to manage community, there are many information provided by Lapar.com, not only on food but also on business and anything related to food. Despite website’s looks that will do better with some revision (like, that flying banner, not very easy on the eyes), MakanPlus facility can provide extra service for Lapar.com other than daily deals. Maybe later on daily deals will only become an extra for a wider service, who knows? One thing for sure, with this level of competition they’re having, they have to come up with many strategies to keep their market share.

Like I once wrote, 2011 will be a busy year for Lapar.com, well actually for all groupon clones. Let’s see what other facilities will be provided by Lapar.com and other daily deals service. Application for mobile device would be a good target to aim and develop.

Translated by Nita Sellya