Sequoia-backed Rukita acquires room rental marketplace

Rukita, an Indonesia-based property startup, has acquired a room rental marketplace called Infokost, which was previously owned by Djarum Group’s investment arm, GDP Venture.

Infokost had shut down in December 2020. Following the acquisition, it was relaunched last month.

Image credit: Rukita

Founded as a co-living startup by Sabrina Soewatdy, Sarah Soewatdy, and Xu-Zonne Ho in 2019, Rukita has shifted its focus to long-term room rentals. It has added several services, such as RuOptions for property marketing, RuManage for property management, and Rukita Mods for room modification.

The company is part of the second cohort of Sequoia Capital’s accelerator program, Surge. In a statement, Rukita expressed the intention to make more acquisitions and expand later this year.

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Meanwhile, Infokost is a room rental marketplace that has been around since 2011. It currently serves 50,000 property owners, with one million rooms listed on the platform.

Even after being shut down for a whole year, Infokost – which means “rental room information” in Bahasa Indonesia – is still in a strong position in the search engine listing.

Rukita said it plans to make several changes to Infokost website but does not intend on integrating it into Rukita’s own platform.