Bukalapak Carves Its Path to Enter the Mid-East Market

Bukalapak just launched BukaGlobal feature. A feature that allows overseas users to make transactions in its platform. This has carved an opportunity for Bukalapak to penetrate new markets. In particular, for Moslem people living in the Middle East.

As quoted from Nikkei Asian Review, Bukalapak's President, Fajrin Rasyid said the Middle East expansion should be started in no time. First is to focus on countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

He also explained that Bukalapak intends to offer different products, it's the Moslem products as a distinction from other marketplaces.

Still on the same source, quoted from Thomson Reuters, the world's Islamic economy is projected to grow over $3 trillion by 2023. The main sector is currently food commodity, estimated to keep increasing from $1.3 trillion in 2017 to $1.8 trillion by 2023, also the fashion industry as predicted to grow from $270 billion to $361 billion.

"We have loads of Moslem fashion and halal food products," he added.

Furthermore, he mentioned that the company decided on the early move to exploit the increasing global demand for Moslem products by offering Indonesian SME's products to the global market.

BukaGlobal is currently acting as a "portal" that connects local producers with overseas buyers. Though, the biggest challenge is to keep the competition level with others due to customs and additional cost of international shipping.

Bukalapak is to stay focused on the Indonesian market

Although BukaGlobal has an opportunity to expand Bukalapak's market, as the leading tech company in Indonesia, they intend to keep it that way.

Overseas expansion might be one of the plans as a digital company. In the effort to penetrate new markets, Bukalapak will keep focusing on the Indonesian market, where they were born and raised.

"We won't lose sight of the Indonesian market," he said.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian