How Warung Digitizing Startup Kudo Escapes Bankruptcy

Kudo caught the attention of Grab and had more than two million partners as of mid-2021. The warung digitization startup, now called GrabKios, almost went bankrupt.

GrabKios or Kudo provides a digital application that is claimed to be able to maximize income, both for individuals, stalls and small entrepreneurs. Partners can provide services for paying bills, insurance, sending packages, sending money to buying gold.

Co-Founder Kudo Agung Nugroho said that his company focuses on products and consumers to survive and grow. “You have to understand what consumers think,” he said in the Impacttalk podcast series program released by Impactto recently.

Starting from Lecture Assignments

Agung Nugroho started Kudo in 2014 with Albert Lucius. At that time both were still studying at the University of California, Berkeley, United States (US). This started from the assignment of entrepreneurship courses or entrepreneurship.

Both of them then look for investors to develop ideas from the coursework. Their efforts to develop Kudo are not easy. After getting funding from East Ventures in 2014, the two started developing products in mid-2014.

Then launched digital product sales services such as vouchers, tickets, bill payments and credit in January 2015. At that time, he opened a kiosk stand at Ciputra Mall.

But there are only three visitors in a day. The next day a little more. Agung also asked visitors about the reasons they did not visit the Kudo kiosk stand.

“They said, ‘I don’t understand bro. If you hold (the device) you are afraid it will be damaged,” he said. Kudo also hired a sales promotion girl or SPG to offer products using a 12-inch tablet device to mall visitors by walking around. After success, this startup attracts more SPG.

After that, Kudo targeted shop owners and started developing applications. Agung said that teaching traders to use digital platforms is not as simple as the facts on the ground.

Agung has to grapple with various ways so that people understand the system and are willing to use Kudo. However, none of the traditional traders were interested in using Kudo in the early days of the trial.

“It has been launched, but no one wants to use it. There’s not even a single person,” Agung said as quoted by Antara. Kudo even almost went bankrupt ahead of the fundraising.

“In the beginning of fund-raising, in a few days it almost went bankrupt. But because of extraordinary efforts and invisible hands from above, everything was back on track,” he said.

Agung and his team mapped out what a traditional trader would need. From there, he understood that they needed additional revenue, an increase in the number of customers, and low product prices to support the business.

Focus on Consumer

To Impactto, Agung said that startups need to understand consumers well. “Come to think of it, how come the budget has almost run out. But when we listen to consumers, there must be a track sheet. It’s just a matter of how quickly we dare to make a decision,” he said.

After that, Agung and Albert focused on customer retention. These are various actions that companies take to keep consumers using the product or service.

According to him, startup founders need to know for sure loyal consumers and the reasons they use the service more than once. If you already understand, just start giving promotions to encourage repeat transactions.

“Early stage startup is all about experiments. How is the retention of users who are given promos and not? As much as possible, don’t give blank promos so you can learn,” he said.

“The important thing is the mindset. Don’t get hung up on tools. Have the right metrics to measure. The analysis team is the startup founder himself. It is better to recruit a sales team to attract more consumers,” he added.

For these various efforts, Kudo has reached more than two million partners. This startup was also acquired by Grab in 2017 and changed its name to GrabKios in September 2019. With this change, GrabKios added products such as sending packages, investing in gold to Umrah through warungs.