Urbanesia Is NOT Dead Yet

As Tech In Asia had it, Urbanesia is currently inaccessible. Well, it has been a couple days already. Good news is, it’s not really dead, at least for now. According to reliable source close to this matter, it’s only a matter of hosting and stuffs. Apparently, Kompas Gramedia Group (KGG) still has series of plans for this startup they bought back in early 2012.

According to the source, KGG had held a competition whose winner has the right to revamp Urbanesia. A total renovation is indeed crucial for the startup as it has seemed a little bit off for quite a while.

As a matter of fact, there hasn’t been any major enhancement that the startup made ever since its CTO, Batista Harahap, (and a number of crews as well) left Urbanesia earlier this year. The latest significant change it made was the opening of its API services, which is about two years ago. Harahap, the former CTO, has just been appointed as the VP of Research Development by Ardent Labs Indonesia, a “laboratory” for digital product experiments

Urbanesia’s problem is actually classical; money. In spite of its reputation as one of best directory websites that can have more than one million visits in a month back in its glorious time, the startup kept finding difficulties in dealing with advertisers. That is actually a common problem for startups who work on the field, as other similar ones like Domikado (It’s even shut down and pivoted) have never had their long run here in Indonesia.

According to SimilarWeb, Urbanesia’s traffic has been free-falling in the last six months. In September 2014, the website even only got visited by around 20 thousands visitors.

Urbanesia is actually one of legendary startups that was established by Selina Limman and Natali Ardianto in the beginning of startup hype period in Indonesia. Thus, we sincerely do hope that the team who is in charge for the renovation may really bring Urbanesia back to its prime time. One of ways to do it is by finding the perfect business model.

[Header illustration: Shutterstock]