Female Daily acquires app builder, sets eyes on social commerce

Female Daily team (l-r): Novita Imelda (operational director and angel investor), Affi Assegaf (co-founder, content & community director), Han Kao (chief product officer), and Hanifa Ambadar (co-founder & CEO).

Female Daily, an online community for Indonesian women to discover and review beauty products, acquired app development house J-Tech to help its business reach the next stage in social commerce. The company announced the news today but didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

Female Daily started in the very early days of the social web. Back in 2007 Fashionese Daily – as it was known then – wasn’t much more than a blog about beauty products, started by Hanifa Ambadar and Affi Assegaf.

Over the years, it developed into an online community with monthly visits in the millions and about 200,000 active users. It generates revenue with native advertising, events, and letting brands engage with the online community, for example through surveys.

In 2014, Female Daily raised a US$1 million round of investment from Ideosource, Sinar Mas Digital Ventures, and Convergence Ventures.

Catching up in tech

Female Daily’s problem, Hanifa admits, is that both co-founders didn’t have much of a technical background. Hiring the right people for product development proved tough. That’s why Female Daily has never launched a mobile app.

The community has been waiting for an app.

“The community has been waiting for an app, most of them are accessing the site through mobile,” Hanifa says. “They also look up reviews and ask us, why can’t I buy the product in here?”

Hanifa realized they needed to reach a stage where they can launch an app-based social commerce platform, fast.

Convergence Ventures, one of Female Daily’s investors, introduced her to Han Kao and his app development company J-Tech. Rather than outsourcing work to them, Hanifa decided to negotiate an acquisition.

“Meeting Han was a blessing, he came with a whole team.”

Female Daily now has an additional nine developers working full time, with Han as chief product officer.

J-Tech developed its own apps as well as client work. Most recently it launched Jiggie, an event discovery and social networking app. It’s unclear what’s going to happen with Jiggie after the J-Tech acquisition. We’ve reached out to Han to learn more.