Karikatour as Middleman App for Tourists and Professional Guides

Another tour and travel startup has arrived. It is Karikatour, created in order to facilitate tourists with the best guides.

Karikatour was founded since late 2018 by five Politeknik Bandung alumni. The CEO, Ryan Nurrochman told us, the idea comes up when they got lost in Sukabumi. Back home, he and his friends create a small research and the result is that no application related to tour and travel allows the users to get professional guides.

"We've done research and found no application such Gojek that in this case, looking for guides and destinations. The other app just offers recommendation without interaction," he said.

Few times he mentioned that the app works similar to Gojek system. If what Gojek does is connecting drivers with passengers, Karikatour makes it happened between tourists and professional guides, also, they can provide transportation and photography service for its users.

However, the guides are limited. Ryan said there are only 5-10 professional guides providing services around Bandung. He finds the number is too small that he decided to add up by the end of this year.

Having a similar business model with Gojek, Karikatour applied the same profit-sharing system to gain revenue. They'll take 10% of the transactions on the platform.

"This year's target is to have full coverage in West Java, not only Bandung, and acquire up to 100 guides for the next year we can reach out to Yogyakarta and Malang," he added.

To date, Karikatour still running bootstrap. They're looking for funding somehow, by making it into incubator and accelerator program.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian