Urbanesia is a Social City Directory in Indonesia

Urbanesia is a city directory start-up for Indonesians to find recommendations on what to do and where to go in Jakarta.

In Urbanesia, you can expect to find complete lists of “things-to-do” and “must-do” in Jakarta, all under one website. There is always something to suit your taste, mood and needs: Fine dining, street food, suppliers, wholesalers and more. Currently there are over 230,000 businesses listed under Urbanesia.

It may sound like another city directory but what differentiates Urbanesia (at least locally) is its social platform and a wide range of information which caters to different users.

“Most directories only have “official businesses” like restaurants but not hawker food, shops in mall but not independent and young designers,” Selina Limman, Founder of Urbanesia told Penn Olson.

“On top of that users can add review and photos to a business profile (our version of a business page) or even their own businesses with events and promotions related to the business. There are many review sites in Indonesia, but they’re mainly restaurant review sites,” she added.

It has been an exciting ride for Urbanesia and their hard work are starting to pay off. As of now, Urbanesia is generating more than 450,000 unique visits in a month. There are also about 16,400 active users in the Urbanesia community. Interestingly, Urbanesia’s location-based search within its website has been used 20 million times by 3.5 million people who have visited the site.

Urbanesia follows a freemium business model, where businesses can pay to get premium business profile benefits. Advertisement is another revenue source but it is minor compared to premium business profile. Urbanesia will also be available on mobile handsets in the near future, which could play an important role in its future revenue model.

“We have a more scalable revenue model in mind that goes with our location based service once our mobile application gains widespread adoption. We currently have Android, and Blackberry and iPhone applications in our development plan,” said Limman.

We’re just scratching the surface. Stay tuned as we learn more from Limman on Urbanesia’s start-up adventure.