PriceArea’s strong growth could signal that Asia is finally ready for price comparison sites

PriceArea's clean user interface is a major draw.

PriceArea, an Indonesian price comparison website, has an enviable growth trajectory.

In March 2011, it saw a respectable 200,000 unique visits a month. By July this year, it was getting 45,000 to 50,000 unique visitors a day, making it the top price comparison site in the country. The number of listed items has multiplied too, swelling from 1.2 million then to about 5 million now.

The tables have certainly turned for CEO Andry Suhaili. While PriceArea is blazing the trail in the price comparison arena in Indonesia, his first ecommerce startup, Checklagi.com, went nowhere.

Started in 2008, Andry describes Checklagi as being similar to Japan’s Rakuten — an online retail marketplace that serves as a platform for retailers and suppliers to reach consumers. But the market gave it a cold shoulder.

“At that time, retailers prefer the conventional approach. They haven’t look at the Internet as an alternative way to generate sales,” he says during an interview at the East Ventures office in Jakarta. Checklagi eventually burnt through its capital and closed down.

After taking stock, Andry moved on. PriceArea was actually an idea he had for improving Checklagi. It turned out that the idea would dramatically improve his entrepreneurial track record.

This year, PriceArea successfully raised a Series B round from Japanese investors  GREE Ventures and So-Net, bringing the company’s valuation to “a couple of million,” Andry told DailySocial. That round followed a Series A investment from early-stage VC fund East Ventures.

The startup’s current upward swing is as much a result of Andry and his team’s adroitness as it is a matter of timing.

Within the short span of a few years, interest in online shopping among Indonesians has picked up. According to Andi Boediman, director of startup incubator Ideosource, around 6%, or 3 million out of 50 million Internet users in Indonesia now shop online, up from 3% in 2009. If these figures are true, it would seem that a large chunk, perhaps even a majority of online shoppers there would have used PriceArea.

Indonesians are beginning to trust e-commerce slightly more. As a result, online retailers like BliBli and Tokopedia have finally found a viable market. PriceArea benefits with more potential revenue, since it plans to earn from affiliate sales in addition to its current advertising income.

Couple this increased trust with the fact that Indonesians are price sensitive when it comes to gadgets (Android trumps iPhone for instance), PriceArea is positioned to be a place where consumers can compare prices and get electronic goods at the best value.