The student left Harvard’s first year and created Indonesia’s largest online travel agency.
Ferry Unardi heads Indonesia's largest online travel agency, Traveloka . Ferry was a first year student at Harvard Business School when he launched the project. It is known that it is not easy to go there, but it is even more difficult to study there. However, in 2012, he left Harvard after the first semester. The entrepreneur has made a choice in favor of his business. In three years, Traveloka’s monthly audience reached 10 million unique users. The staff increased to 400 employees. During this time, Ferry attracted investments from the East Ventures Fund and Global Founders Capital , a venture fund created by the founders of Rocket Internet by the brothers Oliver and Mark Samwera.
“I believe travel is the first product people start buying online. So if we grow, it means that other online stores are doomed to grow, ”said Unardi. If this assumption is true, then for a country with a population of 250 million people and an increasing middle class layer, this is good news, Vedomosti reports. Traveloka collaborates with hotels throughout Southeast Asia and 33 airlines. For its services, the agency takes a commission from 10% to 15% of the reservation amount.
Unardi and his business partners Kusum Derianto and Albert (his name was Unardi) did live and work in Jakarta. He met Albert Unardi while studying programming at Purdue University (USA), and Kusuma was a Microsoft intern. In early 2012, the trio discovered a significant interest of users and investors in this area. By the end of the year, Traveloka, having received investments from the venture capital fund East Ventures, began working as an aggregator of airline ticket offers.
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“The biggest problem of the tourism industry is the availability of information. The key to success was to structure it properly, making it easy to use. As a programmer, we were quite ready to cope with this task, ”says Unardi.
However, the booking process was still too complicated and confusing for most users. In 2013, the developers restarted the site taking into account the wishes of the audience. Unardi does not hide the fact that in developing the concept of service he focused on Expedia and Priceline : "Now the level of creativity and innovation is so high that someone inevitably embodies ideas before." The company does not disclose revenue, Unardi only claims that from month to month it grows at double digit rates. However, he admits that the company still has a lot of problems. The most difficult thing to work with small hotels, where booking is done manually, and building partnerships with major carriers. “At first it is extremely difficult to win their trust. Especially us. After all, we were a small startup, and they were giant companies, ”complains Unardi.
Last year, in addition to booking flights, Traveloka began to offer hotel reservations.
When Traveloka was just launched, few Indonesian sites could boast of sane design and user confidence. It was difficult for customers to get used to paying for services online. It affects not only the delay in the development of the online services market in Indonesia, but also such a common feature of this nation as risk aversion. According to SP eCommerce, in the Asian region, on average, 60% of people compare prices for different online resources before buying, and in Indonesia the proportion of such people reaches 80%.
Unardi grew up in West Sumatra, where interest in programming is stimulated through appropriate activities and contests between schoolchildren. True, his family for a long time could not admit that a Harvard student who did not complete his studies is engaged in a really important matter, and does not waste time on trivial classes on the net. But over time, the attitude of society to the Internet business is changing.
“Everything related to programming is coming into fashion. Now, if you do something on the Internet, you are cool, ”Unardi believes.
“I believe travel is the first product people start buying online. So if we grow, it means that other online stores are doomed to grow, ”said Unardi. If this assumption is true, then for a country with a population of 250 million people and an increasing middle class layer, this is good news, Vedomosti reports. Traveloka collaborates with hotels throughout Southeast Asia and 33 airlines. For its services, the agency takes a commission from 10% to 15% of the reservation amount.
Unardi and his business partners Kusum Derianto and Albert (his name was Unardi) did live and work in Jakarta. He met Albert Unardi while studying programming at Purdue University (USA), and Kusuma was a Microsoft intern. In early 2012, the trio discovered a significant interest of users and investors in this area. By the end of the year, Traveloka, having received investments from the venture capital fund East Ventures, began working as an aggregator of airline ticket offers.
')
“The biggest problem of the tourism industry is the availability of information. The key to success was to structure it properly, making it easy to use. As a programmer, we were quite ready to cope with this task, ”says Unardi.
However, the booking process was still too complicated and confusing for most users. In 2013, the developers restarted the site taking into account the wishes of the audience. Unardi does not hide the fact that in developing the concept of service he focused on Expedia and Priceline : "Now the level of creativity and innovation is so high that someone inevitably embodies ideas before." The company does not disclose revenue, Unardi only claims that from month to month it grows at double digit rates. However, he admits that the company still has a lot of problems. The most difficult thing to work with small hotels, where booking is done manually, and building partnerships with major carriers. “At first it is extremely difficult to win their trust. Especially us. After all, we were a small startup, and they were giant companies, ”complains Unardi.
Last year, in addition to booking flights, Traveloka began to offer hotel reservations.
When Traveloka was just launched, few Indonesian sites could boast of sane design and user confidence. It was difficult for customers to get used to paying for services online. It affects not only the delay in the development of the online services market in Indonesia, but also such a common feature of this nation as risk aversion. According to SP eCommerce, in the Asian region, on average, 60% of people compare prices for different online resources before buying, and in Indonesia the proportion of such people reaches 80%.
Unardi grew up in West Sumatra, where interest in programming is stimulated through appropriate activities and contests between schoolchildren. True, his family for a long time could not admit that a Harvard student who did not complete his studies is engaged in a really important matter, and does not waste time on trivial classes on the net. But over time, the attitude of society to the Internet business is changing.
“Everything related to programming is coming into fashion. Now, if you do something on the Internet, you are cool, ”Unardi believes.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/294886/
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