TrustedCompany is Yelp for e-commerce, aims to solve trust issues online

Trust is still a big issue in e-commerce. The fact that e-commerce transactions eliminate face-to-face interaction can make people get very skeptical toward them. But who can blame them when there are so many scams out there including Groupon’s fake vitamins in the Philippines or the Thai Furby scam that cost consumers over $200,000. However, as e-commerce is one of the biggest booming industries in Asia, it would a shame for the industry not to grow even bigger due to trust issues. Bearing the problem in mind, TrustedCompany.com launched its open review community today, which helps Asian consumers identify trustworthy and reliable online merchants.

The Malaysia-based startup lets users comment on online merchants they have purchased a product or service from. Think Yelp, but for e-commerce sites. At the same time, the company offers online merchants a toolset to collect, display and share authentic customer reviews starting from $11.95 per month. People write their reviews, while the TrustedCompany validates the merchant’s trustworthiness by adding a widget on the page saying something like “TrustedCompany trusts us.”

Backed by Asia Venture Group, the three co-founders – Frederik Krass, Philip Knuth, and Adam Leow Kah Thong – say they built TrustedCompany on the same principle that Jeff Bezos built Amazon. Bezos once said, “Reviews are the joint single biggest conversion factor along with price.”

Asia Venture Group founder Tim Marbach told Tech in Asia during his visit at Startup Asia Jakarta:

The goal for TrustedCompany is to become the trust authority in emerging Asia and beyond that. We want them to look for TrustedCompany.com’s rating before anyone makes any online transaction.

Krass also commented:

“Today, consumers in Asian emerging markets visiting e-commerce sites have no means of validating the merchant behind the respective site and whether they are actually trustworthy and reliable. In many cases that would lead to the consumer not placing an order with that merchant or online at all, but instead sticking to traditional offline retail channels. TrustedCompany.com aims to become a leading consumer review platform for Asian online consumers to check and actively review online merchants.

TrustedCompany will also integrate a Facebook login. It hopes this can help authenticate the users on the platform. Krass believes social verification can help guarantee real people are writing the reviews. Of course, seeing a friend’s review could help to an extent, but since anonymity is still preferred in the region, relying on Facebook to authenticate the reviews could be a bit troublesome.

With the launch, the startup initially set its sights on Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and India, hoping to cover a total population of almost two billion people.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)