Running on less than $1m in funding, Tiket is Indonesia’s bootstrap rockstar

Natali Ardianto, co-founder and CTO of Tiket, sits facing me in a small meeting room next to a koi pond, flanked by Tiket’s PR team. Launched in 2011, the travel booking site is a dinosaur in Indonesia’s young startup scene. It lets you book flights, hotels, train tickets, and event tickets. What makes it stand out among its Indonesian startup peers is that, so far, Tiket has never touched venture capital.

It’s built entirely on an initial angel investment of “under US$1 million,” according to Natali. In 2012, it won US$25,000 in a startup competition. Everything else comes from carefully balancing revenues and expenditures. And focusing on core things like good tech, solid financial planning, proper legal documents. “For us, it’s about the fundamentals,” he explains.

“We designed Tiket to be very corporate,” Natali adds. “It may not be the Silicon Valley way, but we want to show that our way can work in Indonesia.”

Marathon runner

Tech in Asia last visited Tiket mid-2014. Back then, Natali spoke of expansion plans into the region as the next milestone. He also said Tiket might look into raising capital in 2015. But now, one-and-a-half years later – an eternity in startup terms – not much has changed at the company. The team grew from 150 to 230 people, and revenues continue to “grow at a multiple,” but overseas expansion is off the table. He’s not currently seeking external investment. “Of course we regularly talk with VCs,” Natali says.

Tiket is simply not in a rush. “For us, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” says Natali. The company realized there were many more opportunities in Indonesia it hasn’t yet explored. And its profitability isn’t yet as stable as he’d like it to be.

“Since early 2013, our net revenues surpass our operational costs,” Natali says. “But to be honest with you, it’s an up and down until now.”

So Tiket’s focus will remain on doing the things it’s doing now, with ever-increasing efficiency, inching forward to higher profits.

The key to getting there lies in optimization and automation, Natali believes. His obsession with the topic has won the site a conversion rate of 6 percent, which is better than the average ecommerce site manages.

With similar principles, Tiket was able to decrease spending on Google Adsense campaigns by 30 percent this year, simply because the team figured out what worked and what didn’t and cut out the inefficiencies.

Flights of fancy

So how big is Tiket’s business these days?

Unsurprisingly, Natali can’t share the company’s net revenue in hard terms. But the PR team nods yes to Natali’s question if he can share other figures.

The site averages about 10,000 daily transactions. The most popular category is flights, making up more than 50 percent of booking volume and revenue. Of the flights, 90 percent are domestic, another reason why launching overseas isn’t a priority. Tiket’s margin on flight tickets is at 4 to 5 percent.

Train tickets are the next highest in demand. But the margin Tiket gets from trains is so small that this category falls behind hotels in terms of revenue.

Gunning for loyalty

The corporate startup