This Indonesian logistics startup has a strategy to stand out among the rest – find out how
Jakarta-based Anterin wants to give their partners more freedom in determining tariff for every service
As Indonesian e-commerce industry thrives, more and more companies working in subsectors that help support the industry appear before the public’s eyes. For example, Kargo recently announced its seed round funding by East Ventures and angel investor Diono Nurjadin.
Now it is up for these companies to differentiate themselves in order to stand out among competitors.
“As the middle class grows, there will be a shift in customers’ lifestyle, so that logistics companies should start to actively seize new opportunities, instead of just waiting for it to pass by. The middle class, who has been a primary consumer, are educated enough and has high preference in choosing logistics service companies,” writes Rachmat Efendi, Anterin Co-Founder and Director of Business & Development, in an e-mail to e27.
The newcomer logistics and transportation startup aims to achieve it by implementing auction-based system in its booking system.
“Anterin implements an auction system as a mechanism for service booking, where our partners have the ability to determine the tariff for each service. While our competitors use fixed price tariff as determined by the company,” he explains.
When a customer books for a service in the Anterin app, the system will notify nearby service providers (i.e courier). They will then be able to “bid” for customers by offering their proposed tariffs. The customer will then select the one with most suitable pricing range.
“Our challenge will be how to educate and accustom our customers with this auction-based system,” he writes.
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The Anterin app is available for Android devices, and is in internal beta mode at the moment.
The product itself is an online marketplace for small to medium city courier, trucking, transportation, and warehouse services. It also allows individuals (car or motorbike owners) to enlist their service as couriers.
Anterin claims that it currently has “a hundred” of partners on its platform, and is on the process of recruiting for more.
Through its promotional materials, Anterin claims to only cut off five to 10 per cent from each transaction while other companies may take up to 20 per cent.
“[Our strategy to stand out is by] doing community-based recruitment and business development, collaborating for communal success,” Efendi writes.
The startup was founded to answer several challenges existing in the logistics sector lately. Efendi mentioned six core issues that inspired the founders to start the business, which started with the customers’ role as a market object in transportation and logistics industry.
“Tariff variation among online transportation and logistics [services] are not transparent and fixed,” he points out.
“There is also a ‘price war’ among transportation service providers which had disfigured pricing in the market,” he adds.
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Anterin is ran by a team of “less than 10″ which includes co-founders Efendi and Imron Hamzah. It currently opens recruitment to develop the team further.
Efendi also said that it has a received seed funding from an undisclosed investor, and is looking to raise another round.
For the year 2016, the startup wants to focus more on product development by adding more features to the platform as it gears up for the first phase of its official launch in September.
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