Bukalapak Aims to Dominate E-Procurement Market through BukaPengadaan

Bukalapak shared an ambition to dominate the e-procurement market through his vertical Open ProcurementD because it has a market share that is not inferior to the consumer business (b2c). Seen from the success of overseas b2b players such as Alibaba Business and Amazon Business, both grew bigger from the b2c platform.

BukaPengadaan's Director, Hita Supranjaya said the optimism backed by the changing of Indonesian consumers' behavior in terms of digital. Innovations, such as e-commerce, digital payment, and logistics has shifted b2c behavior significantly.

He thought the change encouraged B2B companies to make adjustments by increasing competitiveness and speed in serving customer needs. On the other side, the challenge for B2B companies in facing global market competition is that it takes a long time to develop technology and costs a lot too.

"Bukalapak through BukaPengadaan seeks opportunities to answer the challenge, backed by the proven experience in developing tech-based e-commerce c2c/b2c for ten years," Supranjaya told DailySocial.

In order to be the leading e-procurement, BukaPengadaan is quite lucky to be integrated with Bukalapak marketplace and Quasi Retail. It connects the platform with five million sellers offering more than 80 million products.

As a result, BukaPengadaan is capable to fulfill all procurement from corporations, both business and government, quickly and at competitive prices. In terms of ecosystem, it's comprehensive for companies and vendors, including closed ecosystems for registered users, provision of goods and services, online approval systems, monitoring of goods orders, payment and e-invoicing.

"It gives our customers an advantage in procurement, faster and closest to the sellers, resulting in competitive price. We also help managing lists of vendors and SKUs, therefore, customers can focus on things that are more important than just administrative matters."

Since it was founded in 2016, BukaPengadaan has acquired more than 1500 users, around 80% are companies, and the rest are SMEs and government institutions. On a monthly average, 150 companies actively transact through BukaPengadaan.

Last year, there are 500 users registered, 5 thousand purchase orders, with an average transaction of Rp150 million. Within seven months, BukaPengadaan has recorded a 30% transaction growth. Also, in the last three months, the average income growth has increased by three times per month.

It is said there are new categories and vendors joined every month. Not only retails and supply chain, but also virtual products managed into a one-stop platform. "It allows us to reach almost the whole categories of small, middle to large-scale b2b company essentials," he added.

Large business-coverage, b2b players are solving specific issues

Based on McKinsey & Co report, Indonesian e-procurement has potential worth of $125 billion by 2025. It was estimated from global corporate services ($18 billion), b2b marketplace (76 billion), and b2b services ($36 billion).

Meanwhile, Indonesia's leading players still the b2c marketplace (Lazada, Tokopedia, Shopee, Bukalapak), transportation, travel, and hospitality (Traveloka), and mobility (Gojek and Grab).

The brand awareness rate in this segment might not as tight as the consumer products. However, according to 2018's DSResearch, some players are familiar to the respondents, including Bhinneka Bisnis, Bizzy, and Mbiz.

In terms of growth, the players are not limited, there is also Ralali, Ekosis, TaniHub, and Zilingo. Each platform has its own market share. Ralali, for example, entering the agency segment to target b2b consumers.

Ekosis has its way with connecting businessmen to get various agribusiness, livestock, and mining products. As for TaniHub, plays role as a supplier for b2b consumers come from supermarket, horeca, F&B, retailers, and startup players.

Zilingo, on the other hand, provides cloud-based fashion manufacture products from all over the world for all brands and businessmen can take benefit from it.

The various kinds of b2b e-commerce have shown potential market share to be further explored in order to solve the issues within the b2b players. Moreover, Indonesian SMEs digital transformation has only reached 8% or 3.92 million of the total 59.2 million existed players.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian