Moluko: Startup Australia Citarasa Indonesia [+Interview]

Pertama kali saya membaca tentang startup ini adalah di sebuah artikel di The Next Web. Ketertarikan saya pertama kali terhadap Moluko adalah karena nama founder Moluko tampak tidak asing di mata saya.

Dan betul, ketika saya wawancara founder dan co-founder Moluko berasal dari Indonesia, mereka adalah Hendro Wijaya dan Abdi Dharma. Hendro kini tinggal di Australia sedang Abdi di Medan.

Moluko sendiri secara sederhana adalah sebuah social commerce application atau Facebook shopping cart yang memberikan layanan bagi mereka, para pelaku e-commerce yang ingin 'membawa' toko mereka ke Facebook, mengintegrasikan toko online yang sudah ada dengan social network paling populer saat ini yaitu Facebook.

Kebetulan saya berkesempatan untuk mewawancarai Hendro Wijaya, yang draft wawancara sebenarnya sudah saya lakukan jauh-jauh hari, tapi Moluko sedang berbenah diri, jadi mas Hendro baru membalas pertanyaan saya beberapa hari kebelakang.

Berikut wawancara tentang Moluko, serta beberapa perkembangan baru yang mereka lakukan, meskipun asal Indonesia, wawancara dilakukan dengan bahasa Inggris, karena sejak awal kami berkomunikasi dengan bahasa Inggris. Selamat membaca.

DailySocial [DS]: About Idea and Product:

Moluko [M]: We are seeing the growing popularity of Facebook as a medium for social communication. They have 400 million users now (that is nearly doubled our nation's population). With that massive number of users and the amount of time people spend their time on it, we believe it can be a very powerful medium to do businesses.

We have a very simple objective with our business. We want to drive more traffic and increase sales to the online store owners.

DS: About Moluko Team: Can you tell me about the story behind Moluko, including the team, their background ? I recognize from your name, the two of your team are from Indonesia, can you tell me about this story?

M: All of us are Indonesian. I am originally from Medan. Came to Australia for study and have lived here since then. My co-founder, Abdi, lives in Medan. Brilliant programmer and I have known him for decades. Love technology and business, it's just natural for us to work on technology business.

DS: About Payment system: Moluko using paypal for their payment system, any reason? If their any possibilities of other payment system, because, Indonesia market are not known well enough for this payment system?

M: Moluko now works as an sales extension channel to your existing online store. We no longer rely solely on Paypal. We help drive traffic to your site, but, don't tinker your inventory or payment system.

To get a good idea on how it works, please check out one of our users: Bezdotykovykos

DS: About Facebook: Since your apps are builing at Facebook platform, can you tell me the reason Moluko choose Facebook? And your oppinion about Facebook future? Including their plan to bulit their own payment system.

M: We choose Facebook simply because they are the most popular social networking sites in the world.

Your question about Facebook building their own payment system: Facebook has been building their payment system since 2007 and we think it is healthy for the industry to have them compete with Paypal, Amazon and Google. Competitions generally benefit us as consumers.

DS: About Level of Competition: Can you tell your opinion about the level of competition with existing applications on the market?

M: We believe there are a lot of rooms in terms of market share. I wouldn't give comments with regards to our competitors' offering. =)

DS: About Funding: How you gain revenue and can you tell me about your business model?

M: We are self-funded and haven't foreseen the needs for external funding. Our current business model are: supporting 30 products ($9 / month), 300 products ($19 / month) and 1000 products ($49 / month).

DS: About Moluko Future plan: Can you tell me about future plan on Moluko? Feature that you want to add? Any killer feature that you will launch?

M: We are working on supporting major e-commerce vendors now. Aside from that, we are working on some cool features and I can't reveal much information about it at this stage. :)

DS: About Internet in Indonesia: Indonesia has become one of the biggest market in Asia, how do you think about that? Will Indonesia become like India and China?

M: It is definitely exciting. I think it is too early to tell whether we will become as huge as China or India. A lot of it depend on what we (especially entrepreneurs and governments) do now that help drive the desired future become reality. Let's not forget Infosys of India started way back in 1981.

One thing for sure, we need more young people to start the company there, work on exciting problems and benchmark ourselves against the world-class standard. We definitely have potentials. I am very optimistic and excited about that.

DS: Any Words for Startups in Indonesia:

M: I am very curious with problems that we have as a country especially with regards to extreme poverty and education-gap among poor. I deeply believe there are a lot of opportunities there and would love to see local startups help solve those inequalities problems.

Seperti yang telah dijelaskan oleh Moluko, Facebook memang menyimpan user yang banyak, yang merupakan pangsa pasar potensial, ada startup yang membuat aplikasi mandiri, ada pula startup yang membuat aplikasi di aplikasi lain yang telah berkembang dan mempunyai massa tersendiri, seperti Facebook, dan Moluko adalah satu diantaranya.

Moluko masih dalam taraf beta jadi, bisa dipastikan masih akan terus berkembang, mereka pun tidak sendirian bermain di segmen aplikasi Facebook shopping cart, seperti yang ditulis The Next Web, pemain lain seperti Payvment dan ShopTab menjadi pesaing Moluko. Tetapi pengguna yang dimiliki Facebook sangatlah luas, pangsa pasar masih terbuka lebar dan ini, saya pikir yang menjadi salah satu alasan Moluko tetap optimis dan tidak takut bersaing, sebuah semangat yang harus dimiliki bagi para startup.

Untuk melihat harga yang ditawarkan Moluko atas layanan mereka serta keterangan lain tentang Moluko, anda bisa mengunjungi situsnya di sini.

ps: Terima kasih untuk mas Hendro Wijaya atas kesempatan wawancaranya.