A lesson from Net Impact : Indonesia need more clones!

After attending the Net Impact Conference event a few days ago, I have come to a revelation that based on what's happening in emerging markets like Vietnam, Thailand etc : Indonesia need more clones. The guys from Rocket Internet would be laughing at me by now, but allow me to further elaborate.

I saw presentations from gaming companies in Vietnam, social networking sites from China, an ad agency / portal from Japan that also shared their experience on doing business in their local market. I have to say that I'm a bit envious looking at these companies that makes millions of dollars each month as the result of a solid business model and a monetizable market. That is something that Indonesia is still lacking on.

But learning from all the keynotes delivered by these successful companies, all of them are simply bringing a model that works in other markets and then localize the service for local use.

Take VNG, a gaming company from Vietnam generating tons of money making games for low-end phones in Vietnam. It's a very localized company, they probably won't expand outside Vietnamese market but they sure know how to do things in Vietnam and making a good business out of it.

Another example is Sina-Weibo, started as a microblogging service for Chinese market but has grown to a social networking platform that is bigger that Twitter in market size and revenue. Again, they took Twitter's microblogging concept and localize it to Chinese market, and then scale it! Sina Weibo is now making money from interactive ads, social games (virtual items), real time search, and e-commerce. Not even Twitter is as big a business as Sina-Weibo, niche as they may be.

A good local example, is GantiBaju. Adapting a model that works, localize it and make one hell of a business out of it.

Apparently, we need more clones to get the industry going. There, I said it. But if there's one crucial thing that I might add, that would monetization. We need more clones that actually makes money! We need more clones that can actually do business and generate revenue, not because it's "cool" but because it's necessary. These companies I saw delivering keynotes at Net Impact, they're exploiting a low-hanging fruit and manage to sell it, that's what differentiates them with the currently growing Indonesian clones.

So in conclusion and learning from Net Impact Conference, Indonesia need more clones that makes money. Dear people of Rocket Internet, I sincerely welcome you to our country.

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