The informal guesthouse market is huge in Indonesia, and this startup claims the most complete selection

Indonesia, it is not uncommon for young people to live in their parents’ homes until they are married and move out to start a family. But many do have to leave home early – to study or for work for example – and for these folks, Indonesia invented the word “kost” to refer to guestrooms or boarding houses.

A kost is essentially an affordable room for long term tenants with basic amenities and a shared kitchen. Indonesia’s Infokost.id wants to offer the most complete listing for people in search of temporary housing accomodation. Founded in 2010, this website makes it possible to find kosts on a neighborhood level, and get in touch with the kost owners directly.

Frandy Sugianto, founder of Infokost.id, estimates there are 40,000 to 50,000 kosts in Indonesia, the majority of them in large cities. A typical kost may have between 20 to 25 rooms, according to his estimate.

If you consider each room for rent at around US$100 per month, that’s a pretty sizeable market. However, little official data seems to exists about the informal kost sector, and even long-term players like Sugianto rely on rough estimates.

Partnership with community site Kaskus

Infokost.id received seed funding when it joined the Merah Putih incubator shortly after its inception in 2010. Sugianto didn’t disclose the amount invested. Since then, there have been no further investments, although Infokost.id has managed to stick around.

In 2014, Infokost.id struck a partnership with fellow Merah Putih incubator startup Kaskus. The popular community website now features a channel with Infokost.id’s listings, helping to direct traffic to the site.

Sugianto claims infokost.id clocks around 400,000 unique visitors monthly. Web traffic statistics service Similarweb reports only 60,000 to 70,000 unique visitors, but that doesn’t cover traffic from associated URLs and mobile.

Profitable model

Infokost’s revenue comes from a listing fee to kost-owners seeking extra exposure. This comes in the form of banner advertising and a marketing fee for clients interested in engaging with the kost community. With a team of 16 people currently working on the site, Sugianto says infokost.id is turning a profit, but did not share further details.

According to Sugianto, the site has more than 25,000 listings in Indonesia’s major cities, making it the most complete kost database in Indonesia. Other sites tend to offer kosts based on single cities or neighborhoods only, according to Sugianto.

Interestingly, there is an unrelated site with a similar name. Infokost.com also offers kosts in Indonesia. This site is a direct competitor with Infokost.id. Pesankost is another player, and this site has the added benefit of offering an online booking tool for all its listings.

Infokost.id has already expanded beyond its original focus on kosts to also include other types of accommodation, like apartments and villas. Moving forward, Sugianto says Infokost.id plans to introduce more kosts offering rooms on a daily basis rather than monthly. For those, he has introduced a direct booking feature on the site. “We want to be the Agoda for kosts,” explains Sugianto.