BBM may be losing ground, but it’s not giving up

Photo credit: Pankaj Mishra.

Blackberry Messenger (BBM) has most likely lost its position as most popular social network in Indonesia.

But KMK, the company that holds a license to develop Blackberry (BBM) in Indonesia, is fighting back.

The end goal is to transform BBM from a simple messenger into a multi-purpose on-demand app, similar to WeChat. This includes integrating social commerce features and a number of content channels. It still has over 60 million active users in Indonesia – Facebook, for comparison, has 88 million.

KMK has another trump up its sleeve. It’s part of Indonesian media group Emtek and has access to some of the countries most popular online sites and TV channels. KMK also owns several digital properties, including ecommerce, which it plans to fold into BBM.

Deals, deals, deals

One of those is Lakupon, a site that offers discount coupons for things like restaurants, travel, and online shopping. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s kind of like Groupon.

Lakupon just raised US$740,000 from New Wealth Capital.

Except being part of a big media company gives Lakupon the advantage that it doesn’t have to invest in building an audience. It can blast deals to millions of people through Emtek’s channels – including BBM, once the integration is complete.

“Unlike other coupon models who simply take commission from their merchant, even though they might have already sold at a loss, we are an online to offline marketing solution for our merchant [and] we’ve got an integrated media partner,” says Leonard Kwee. He co-founded Lakupon together with Jason Nurjadi in 2012 before selling a controlling stake to KMK.

Lakupon just raised US$740,000 from Singaporean investment firm New Wealth Capital, primarily to fund the development process required to complete the BBM-Lakupon integration.

“Lakupon will sell their vouchers on BBM – to over 60 million users in Indonesia – and become a portal for BBM users to the offline world,” Leonard explained. He added there are further, “still confidential” plans to cooperate with BBM.

The number of vouchers sold on Lakupon, or other figures to get a sense of the site’s traction, were also “confidential up to a later date after BBM-Voucher is launched in Q4 this year.”