AdaDiskon is a Media Start-up on Deals and Promotions

Whether it’s bazaars or crazy midnight sales, AdaDiskon provides all sorts of deals in Indonesia for Indonesians. That’s how AdaDiskon’s co-founder Aswin Utomo describes his start-up. While everyone is fanatically into the group-buying model, Utomo feels that there is a need to differentiate from the crowd. So, that’s how the idea came about: a media start-up on deals and promotions.

AdaDiskon was launched privately on June 2009 to prove that the concept is viable. At that time, the start-up worked with early partners such as ACE Hardware and Charles and Keith to generate feedback. Through continual improvements, AdaDiskon finally went live on October 2010.

Business seems good. AdaDiskon’s web traffic skyrocketed by 600 percent in 2010. Currently, it has over 180,000 monthly unique visitors with over 500,000 page views. The deals media start-up is also highly popular on social media. It has over 80,000 followers on Twitter and 52,000 likes on Facebook, which makes it one of the most popular companies in Indonesia on social media. The goal, as Utomo puts it, is to “build a social network for bargain hunters in Indonesia.”

“We have several full time editors and writers as well as several freelance journalists in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya. I guess instead of focusing on developing a flashy website and mobile apps, we are more focused on creating great contents,” said Aswin Utomo

AdaDiskon’s design is easy to the eyes. Users can intuitively find relevant deals on the sidebar. All merchants, banks and malls can sign up as partners for free to gain access to tools to post their promotions.

Monetization

AdaDiskon makes money by selling ad spaces and helping brands share promotions with their community of shoppers on Facebook and Twitter. “Revenue growth has been great. We just reached profitability last month,” said Utomo.

“Since most of our followers are shoppers, promotional tweets or updates are very much of their interest. It also gives brands a highly effective and targeted marketing platform. Brands which advertise with us usually come back again,” he added.

Thanks to entrepreneurs like Utomo, Indonesia is rising as a start-up nation. Start-ups like AdaDiskon, Freesia City and Tokopedia are inspiring examples for younger Indonesians to go after their entrepreneurial dreams.