Plasa Looking to Sell Its Ecommerce Biz to eBay

It seems that eBay may jump directly into Indonesia's ecommerce scene by acquiring Plasa.com's ecommerce business according to sources inside and outside of the companies.

Ecommerce may have been Plasa's new direction under former CEO Shinta Dhanuwardoyo, but now that she's gone and Plasa's online marketplace is practically on autopilot, the company is said to be looking to cut its losses by selling it to eBay. This deal however is still not finalized and there's a chance that it may not even happen. At the moment, both companies are still wrangling about the details of the deal.

Plasa.com has been having a rough time since the departure of former CEO Shinta Dhanuwardoyo and Chief Innovation Officer Andi S. Boediman. The company hired Iriana Muadz from Heinz ABC in March 2011 before she too left the company last month. In the meantime, Aris Siswoko from within Telkom's management ranks is said to be running the company.

While Plasa had won a deal with Microsoft to operate its MSN news portal, it lost the deal with eBay to extend its ecommerce business beyond Indonesia. The deal was supposed to have linked Indonesian merchants at Plasa to overseas customers using eBay's platform. Instead, eBay set up shop locally to explore the market for further opportunities on its own, so it is a bit of twist that Plasa is now working to sell its ecommerce business to eBay.

The ecommerce scene in Indonesia can probably still be considered as murky waters thanks to the lack of a seamless and comprehensive payment method due to strict banking regulations. Despite the efforts of big banks such as BCA, Mandiri, Permata, the launch of Doku, Inapay, ExRupiah, and countless other online payment initiatives, none have emerged to drive ecommerce beyond a very niche adoption level.

It looks as if Plasa is struggling under the weight of the competition in ecommerce with Tokobagus and Kaskus being two of the top ecommerce sites in the country and Multiply making headways and moving its headquarters to Jakarta from Boca Raton.

Aside from the potential deal with eBay, Plasa's problems don't seem to end there. Multiple sources informed us that Plasa is laying off a significant number of employees beginning this month and continuing right through March. It currently has around 200 employees and may lose more than 20 before the end of the quarter. It also has lost a large number of staff over the past year.

It's looking more likely that Telkom will have to roll back Plasa into its own ranks rather than continue with this pseudo-startup experiment that doesn't seem to be working. Should everything fall by the way side, Plasa will probably end up right where it started, as an email provider, albeit a much more substantial one with the backing of Microsoft. PlasaMSN however, could still survive under Microsoft's own management if this happens.