8 mcommerce apps to help you sell online in Indonesia

You can’t look at the Indonesian ecommerce market without taking into consideration its tidal wave of smartphone users. eMarketer predicts Indonesia will become world’s fourth-largest smartphone market by 2018.

For many locals, particularly those in second- and third-tier cities, there’s a choice between having to buy a particular item online or simply not getting their hands on it at all. Whittling it down further, in terms of web access, it sometimes comes down to a choice between surfing via smartphone or not being able to access the internet at all.

Last September, almost 27 percent of all the country’s ecommerce transactions occurred via social media. With all these nuggets of information, we in Jakarta are curious to see how mobile commerce (mcommerce) will fit into the archipelago’s retail sector over the next three years. Several ecommerce players have come out with mobile apps already, and many more are just bypassing desktop in favor of a mobile-first strategy.

In no particular order, here are a few mobile apps that can help average Indonesians sell online, categorized by business model (Psst: This list is not exhaustive, so if you have one to add, please include it in the comments thread below).

See: 10 of the most useful mobile shopping apps in Indonesia

C2C marketplaces

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplaces are quite popular in Indonesia. Here’s how they work in a nutshell: users register on the site, and then build their own online shop within the confines of the portal. When someone wants to buy your products, they simply order it from you online and typically submit payment to the marketplace’s escrow system. Once the goods arrive, the payment is released to the vendor. Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce models like Lazada or Amazon, any average person can participate in a C2C marketplace.

In Indonesia, the most notable C2C marketplaces with mobile apps for iOS and Android are Tokopedia and Bukalapak. Tokopedia brings the concept of the “mobile mall,” which requires users to create a shop online first. When they do, users can then start selling by uploading a photo and product descriptions.

You could say Bukalapak’s app is almost the same as Tokopedia’s, but there’s a slight difference. Bukalapak doesn’t require its users to build online stores beforehand. Instead, vendors can simply start uploading photos and selling their wares.

Online classifieds

An online classifieds service is one of the easiest and fastest ways to sell things on the internet. It’s also ideal for people who don’t want to mess with escrow systems or complex payment options. Most often, folks using classifieds sites resort to direct forms of payment like bank transfers or cash on delivery (COD), which arguably are still best-suited for Southeast Asian markets.

If you’re someone who likes to sell things the old fashioned way, online classifieds apps like OLX Indonesia and Jualo might be the way forward.

Social mcommerce