Introducing Indodax's Sister Company Sehatigold, an E-commerce Platform for Gold

Today is absolutely the right time for those who want to buy gold. Everytime the economy slows down, it's most certain that people will seek after gold as a commodity. The anti-recession value of gold is the main reason this commodity always has its market.

Before the world economy was partially paralyzed by the outbreak of the corona virus disease 2019 (Covid-19), experts had predicted a recession would envelop the world economy, one of which was triggered by a trade war between the United States and China. Corona pandemic has exacerbated the projections. The IMF estimates that the global economy will shrink to minus 3%. Indonesia's economic growth is projected to be only 0.5%.

This macro condition that continues to sharpen the gold market. And this is a reason behind Sehatigold's gold investment platform creation. The CEO, Denny Ardhiyanto said, truth be told the gold company has been in for decades. However, recently Sehatigold has transformed as an online gold trading platform.

"One of the reasons is because of the increasing number of requests from our customers, especially during this crisis, people have transferred their wealth to gold because it has a more stable value, also a secure investment," Ardhiyanto told DailySocial.

He also said the platform was made to solve two problems in buying and selling gold, for a very small to the loss of profit margin when trading gold, also the affordability. Sehatigold offers solutions by selling gold starting from 0.01 grams or having a nominal value of IDR 10,000 without any additional costs.

To date, Sehatigold has several main services. In addition to buying and selling gold, customers can exchange the gold savings they buy online into physical gold in the form of jewelry or precious metals. Then, the platform allows users to trade gold.

"Sehatigold's target and user segments are people in Indonesia who are interested in gold both for savings and speculation," he added.

Monetization and funding

Ardhiyanto said the gold trading market in Indonesia is quite large. In fact, Antam's gold sales continue to surge every year. In 2014, the sales were still around 10 thousand kilograms, then increased significantly to 27,891 kilograms in 2018.

Along with the current pandemic, Denny revealed the probability of assets transfer from the capital market and financial markets to the gold market. He also mentioned the price of gold had risen 20% during the first quarter of 2020. "Since the beginning of 2020, we have seen a surge in people's demand to buy gold. In the past month, thousands of grams of Precious Metals have been withdrawn by members of Sehatigold."

Related to monetization, Denny said their team took profits as the usual gold shop. However, he claims the difference in profit they take is smaller than other places because they prioritize the volume of transactions.

They are still focused on growing the business, therefore, Sheatigold is yet to raise fund. Denny said they currently operate with independent financial support (bootstrap) with capital injections from angel investors.

As noted from Ardhiyanto's statement, one of their co-founders is a major shareholder in Indodax. It makes Sehatigold the sister company of the cryptocurrency trading platform.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian