Ask TIA: Why isn’t anyone building products for superstitious people?

Indonesia (and perhaps any developing countries in Asia) is a superstitious country. Even though the majority of Indonesian are Moslems, and Islam is condemning superstition, it seems such facts don’t prevent them to believe in supernatural.

You can see, most local newspapers are filled with dukun (shaman) service advertisements, or even police using dukun to solve crimes. Ironically, there are also quite a large number of crimes that are committed by the dukun themselves (mostly are sexual assault or murder though, not swindling).

You can see at Kaskus, the most famous forum in Indonesia, dedicated one sub-forum to superstition and see how active the thread oisthere. These facts prove that there are masses that believe om dukun and using their services is a norm in Indonesia.

I am in no position to judge such conditions as good or not. My point is, although there is a huge market available, it seems this market isn’t being tapped.

I know it looks ridiculous. But I hope you might want to share your opinion about this.

I personally can’t find any startup related to paranormal. There is no single articles about paranormal startup in Tech In Asia (heck I can’t even put “supernatural” as tag in here).

I believe there are lot of opportunities can be started for superstition. It could be uber-like for the dukun service? Perhaps a marketplace selling charms?

There could be more “lighthearted” services, like tarot card reading, fengshui consultation, bazi readings, palmistry etc, which can be treated as entertainment.

What do you think? Why does nobody run startup around supernatural industry? Because of the taboos? Because it doesn’t look sexy? Because it is too creepy?

Image Credit: Anna Munandar