New ‘Uber for hotel rooms’ startup takes aim at Indonesia as market heats up

One of Tinggal’s hotel rooms in Jakarta. Photo credit: Tinggal

Tinggal helps budget hotels in Indonesia get more customers. The startup approaches individual hotels and works with them so that they adhere to a minimum service standard. Tinggal then markets the rooms via its online portal.

It’s a concept we’ve recently seen spring up across Southeast Asia. Rocket Internet’s Zenrooms and Nida Rooms are the two prominent players.

What makes Tinggal interesting, as founder Arjun Chopra points out, is its association with India’s Wudstay – a budget hotel startup that’s been aggressively expanding in India.

Wudstay’s founder Prafulla Mathur is the lead investor in the US$1 million round Tinggal closed earlier this week. Mangrove Capital Partners, Simile Ventures, and Vikas Saxena, co-founder of messaging app Nimbuzz, are also involved.

Speeding ahead

Wudstay supports Tinggal with technical and operational know-how. “There’s a significant knowledge transfer,” Arjun affirms. In fact, Tinggal in some ways appears like the Indonesian version of Wudstay. The sites look exactly the same and even share a logo. They are, however, separate entities.

Tinggal’s site resembles Wudstay’s – the Indian company that’s also Tinggal’s lead investor.

“We have started with the Wudstay platform and the learnings, however Tinggal is the Indonesia-focused company and we do have a separate development team. […] Tinggal is a standalone product with its own IP,” Arjun explains.

Tinggal began its operations in Indonesia last month. Arjun relocated to Indonesia around the same time, but he’s a veteran in digital business and to the region. His previous positions in India and Singapore include companies like PayPal, Ebay, and Anchanto.

In just a month, Tinggal has struck up partnerships with 52 hotels in Jakarta, Bali, Bandung, and Malang. The site now has about 500 rooms on offer.

It’s possible the support it gets from Wudstay will give Tinggal the upper hand in the race with Zenrooms and Nida Rooms – both of which have been operating in Indonesia and other countries in the region for a few months. Wudstay has been building and improving its product in India for over a year, and parts of what it learned there is applicable to Indonesia.

Street scene in Malang, one of the medium-sized Indonesian cities Tinggal operates in. Photo credit: Nurudin Jauhar

How is Tinggal different?