Achmad Zaky, Founder of Bukalapak.com Shares His Plans After Investment

Achmad Zaky, founder of Bukalapak.com

Bukalapak.com, one of the C2C e-commerce sites based in Indonesia, received investment last week from Batavia Incubator, a joint venture between a Japanese venture capital firm and an Indonesian financial institute.

To find out more about their future plans after the investment, we contacted Bukalapak founder, Achmad Zaky, for an email interview.

1. What is the story behind this investment deal? Why did you chose Batavia Incubator?

It was pure coincidence when I met up with the people at Batavia Incubator. I was introduced to them by my friend when we held a sharing session. During the session, I told them a little bit about Bukalapak. Surprisingly, Batavia Incubator became interested. They went on to ask a couple of questions and give us some advice.

After that session, we scheduled a follow up meeting with the same intention, just for pure sharing. We shared quite intensively, probably once a week.

We found that Batavia has a lot of experience in Japan and was able to give us much feedback and tips. Then when Batavia offered a serious proposal, we said yes without any hesitation. Meanwhile, some other VCs who we also had discussions with did not have a strong understanding or experience about e-commerce. That’s why we chose Batavia Incubator.

2. Can you share some details about this investment?

Batavia Incubator gets about a 20 percent share of Bukalapak.com and one board member out of a total possible three. Takeshi Ebihara, director of Batavia Incubator, joins as our director. The rest of the two board members are Nugroho Herucahyono and me as the CTO. We asked Mr. Takeshi himself to be actively involved because of his expertise which has helped Bukalapak.com improve by a huge margin.

3. What are your targets and plans with this newly added-capital?

We will use a big portion of the capital to improve our services to users. We want to improve our services to users and merchants who spend their lives on Bukalapak.com. Many merchants work to feed their family just by trading stuff on the site. It’s an honor for us if we can increase their trading frequency so they have greater revenue.

We are also aiming for 100,000 merchants next year. Currently we have only about 40,000. After this deal, I will quit my position as managing director in Suitmedia and focus on Bukalapak. Suitmedia’s Managing Director is now Fajrin Rasyid. We will be managing Bukalapak.com full-time from now on. Previously, our CTO and I weren’t fully managing the site on a day-to-day basis. This has to change if we want it to reach hockey-stick growth.