Maiplay’s CEO Talks About Beating Groupon in Indonesia

Seeing Indonesia oozing with potential, group-buying service Maiplay, launched its service two weeks ago in the country.

Maiplay originates from Hawaii as PlayHawaii. Much like other group-buying sites, it offers deals from restaurants, spas, entertainment merchants, many more. We got in touch with Jon Sugihara, CEO & Co-Founder of Maiplay and PlayHawaii to learn more about the service and his plans in Indonesia.

1. Maiplay just launched in Indonesia, but Groupon is already here. What are your thoughts on this?

One of the challenges to group buying is that there is no customer loyalty. They will buy with whoever has the best deal that day. We have been able to compete with and beat Groupon consistently in Hawaii by providing better deals and we are confident that we can do this again in Jakarta. We have already featured a number of the best restaurants in Jakarta.

2. I know you must be tired of answering this question, but what’s the difference between you and other Groupon ‘clones?’

Our focus is on quality and great deals, both for the merchant and for the customer. Our other differentiator is the value we add to the merchant. We have a number of services and products that the customer does not see that help the merchant to get a clear picture of how their promotion did. Our competitors disappear as soon as the deal is signed, so most businesses are in the dark as to what they got from a promotion. We focus on engaging with the customer and getting them to return to the business after the initial promotion.

maiplay.com

3. If you plan to expand across Indonesia, how do you scale and put your presence across all cities?

The biggest challenge to scaling is finding sales people and managing those teams across larger geographies. We have a number of methodologies and tools that allow us to track the performance and support our teams from anywhere in the world. We have been doing this for almost 2 years, so we have had a lot of time to learn from our mistakes and grow.

4. I heard that one of your backers is Eduardo Saverin. How does he help your start-up?

Eduardo Saverin is helping us as an advisor. Eduardo is very strategic for us as the core principal of group buying is the social aspect of sharing deals with friends. Over 30% of the traffic to each of our deals come from social networks, so it is imperative that we have solid integrations with these networks. Eduardo is helping us to build strategies on how we can maximize Facebook and other social media.

5. Finally, what is your target and plan for Indonesia this year?

We believe the potential market for Jakarta alone could be over USD$12m/year as long as we can convince consumers to spend money online. There is a target population of over 2m users that fit into the initial demographic of users that we are targeting. These are young professionals with disposable income. They love to go out and try new things and are computer savvy.