From small town to running Indonesia’s biggest price comparison site, here’s Andry Suhaili’s story

Having the mindset to start a business is good, but having the mental strength to bounce back after several failed ventures and really make it in the end is something else entirely. Andry Suhaili, founder and CEO of Indonesia’s price comparison company PriceArea ¹, recently announced that his company was acquired by South Korea’s Yello Mobile. Suhaili himself has been in the thick of the entrepreneurship world over the past 10 years, shutting down a few companies in the process but still coming back even stronger to build the next venture.

(See: Yello Mobile acquires Indonesian price comparison site PriceArea)

PriceArea, which launched in 2010, now offers 15 million products from over 860,000 sellers. Last year, the site received 12 million visits and claims to be the first price comparison website in Indonesia.

Striving for education excellence since early years

Suhaili’s journey began on the small island of Bangka. After completing half of his elementary years there, he headed to Jakarta and the capital’s superior schools. He continued his junior and senior high school education in Singapore, and then obtained his university degree in Los Angeles. The journey was quite tough for him as he had to adapt to new friends and ways of learning in different schools.

“Being a kid from a small town, I had trouble coping with studies and making friends – mainly because the language barrier from [Bangka] dialect to proper Bahasa [Indonesia] – but I managed to pass the class [in Jakarta],” says Suhaili. “I faced the same problem [when moving to Singapore]. But that time was much harder, because it’s English, and I barely passed my first year in junior high school.”

Through hard work, Suhaili was able to overcome any adversity he encountered as a student. While a lot of his peers would have been happy just laying back and studying as required in their schools, Suhaili was the one who asked his parents to transfer him from one school to another so he could learn more things. He finally topped his class in the second year of junior high school in Singapore.

“That was the first time I experienced what success felt like,” Suhaili says.

After completing his bachelor’s degree in computer animation, he interned as a creative designer at Ogilvy and Mather in Los Angeles for six months. After years spent overseas, Suhaili finally decided to return home to Indonesia.

“Having a major degree in computer animation and minor in computer science, back then I didn’t know what I can do to achieve my dreams in Indonesia,” he says. “But the reason was because I made a promise to my mom that I would return for good [after completing my degree]. Although not for the country, but at least for my family.”

Finding new opportunities from crisis

What’s the reason behind Suhaili’s entrepreneurial spirit?

“I always wanted to be rich and successful. To do that, I needed to become an entrepreneur,” Suhaili adds. “Soon after I returned from the USA, I formed my first business in a garage with two interns as my employees.”

His first instinct when choosing what kind of company he wanted to run was the kind where he could apply his top academic skill – computer animation. He started a design house and web development agency in 2004 called Artic, which later expanded to a full service advertising agency. While things looked good in the first four years, things took a painful turn for Suhaili.

“The company was doing well until 2008 when most of my clients got struck by the economic crisis [they had to cut advertising budget to 50 percent]. I had to lay off half of my employees, including my art and creative directors,” he says

From creatives to geeks

Expansion ahead