European startup wants to add polish to the way Indonesian companies do social media

Michal Sadowski, founder and CEO of Brand24.

Michal Sadowski, founder and CEO of Poland-based social media monitoring tool Brand24, believes Indonesia is one of the most important markets for brands and businesses to enter right now due to its “booming economy” and rapid internet adoption.

“The Indonesian internet market is so much different than anything we’ve seen so far,” explains Sadowski. “For example, Kaskus generates more daily data than all Polish message boards combined.”

Sadowski describes Brand24 as a powerful, easy-to-use, and cost-effective way for businesses to find out what people are saying about them online. He claims Brand24 tracks all public mentions of your product regardless of where it appears on the internet. Companies don’t have to “add” social media channels to monitor, but rather, just provide keywords and Brand24 will hunt for those keywords all over the web.

Sadowski, who is also the founder of Patrz.pl (a Polish competitor of YouTube), says internet monitoring is already a crowded space, but there are gaps in terms of the price and quality of the available tools. The majority of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) simply can’t afford internet monitoring when prices start at US$600 per month, Sadowski explains, which is why nine out of 10 companies don’t use monitoring tools even though they express interest.

Brand24 officially opened its doors in Indonesia in March 2013. But Sadowski says most of his company’s traction in the archipelago has occurred in the last few months, as Brand24 recently signed more than 30 large companies including Mizone, CIMB Bank, and Adidas. Before entering Indonesia, Brand24 landed accounts with major global brands such as IKEA, Panasonic, Intel, and AirFrance.

See: Indonesia’s airlines that are losing or winning at social media

Sadowski claims Brand24 competes with both high-end and low-end tools around the world, including Salesforce, Sysomos, Brandwatch, Meltwater Buzz, uberVU, Google Alerts, and Social Mention. But according to Sadowski, Brand24’s advantage is that it offers the right tiils at a lower price than competitors.

Sadowski claims Brand24 monitors more than 25,000 global brands for over 600 active subscribers. This means that as a fully bootstrapped operation with 30 employees, Brand24 currently has more than 600 paying customers each month, and Sadowski says the company has been able to reinvest US$1 million of its earnings back into its operations. As a result, Brand24 has been able to focus more on its Indonesian operation this year.

Sadowski believes the global internet monitoring market will reach US$60 billion by 2017 with Indonesia playing an increasingly important role. However, he admits Indonesia poses some unique challenges.

“Language diversity and local sources of data are two major challenges for any monitoring tool entering the Indonesian market,” says Sadowski, who also remains optimistic about Brand24 as an early mover in Indonesia. He adds, “An early presence might convert to a leadership status in following years for any company in the Indonesian market.”

See more: These brands are dominating social media in Indonesia