Targeted by Jeff Bezos, YukKulak Startup Facilitates Stall Digitization

Distribution solutions company PT Firmus Solusindo launched the YukKulak business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform. This application facilitates distributors serving the retail market such as wholesalers to stalls to shop online.

Firmus Solusindo President Director Hadi Buntoro said the distribution business competition was getting tougher. Currently, from unicorn to the top three richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos is starting to penetrate the retail market segment such as warungs in Indonesia.

“For this reason, we launched YukKulak which helps distributors in carrying out business transformation,” Hadi said in a press release, Monday (1/11).

In serving distributors reaching stalls and other retail segments, YukKulak uses a Closed Loop System. This allows distributors to manage customers within the network independently.

Distributors can also offer products that can be tailored to the characteristics of the stall. In addition, it can manage a loyalty program for stalls. There is also a Multi-Principal feature that makes it easier for the sales team to manage, monitor, and evaluate sales performance.

Has Back-end Features that are Integrated with Other Applications

YukKulak also has back-end features that are integrated with other applications, ranging from supply chain management to financial calculations or financial accounting management.

Integration can be done automatically, machine to machine, semi-automatic, and manually. Hadi said that through technological capabilities, distributors can get various benefits.

One of them, can send orders at any time and is flexible. Based on the company’s internal data, users can get 15% – 20% of sales orders after joining YukKulak.

Users can also reduce sales costs by up to 10% of the total. In addition, increasing operational reach, customer loyalty, internal business processes to the company’s brand image.

Warung has been the target of the company since 2019

Stalls in Indonesia have indeed been the target of unicorns and decacorns since 2019. This segment increases in demand due to the pandemic. For example, Bukalapak hooked up 8million agent partners and stalls as of August. 

Meanwhile, last year’s transactions volume was up to 3.6 million. Based on Bukalapak’s mini expose at the end of June, the unicorn claimed that its digital shop market share was 39% in Indonesia.

The total value of business processes or total processing value (TPV) of agent partners and stalls has grown on average 105% per year since 2018.

Tokopedia is also targeting warungs. Head of New Retail Tokopedia Karina Susilo said the company had hooked up millions of stalls. But he didn’t specify the numbers or targets.

“There are millions of stall partners in all around Indonesia,” Karina said in a virtual media briefing, on August this year.

“The reach has more than doubled if compared to the past two years,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has also invested in Indonesian warung digitization startup, Ula.

Previously Jeff Bezos also Invested in Startup Ula

In early October, Ula managed to raise a series B funding of US$ 87 million or around Rp 1.24 trillion, led by Prosus Ventures, Tencent, and B-Capital. Another participating investor is Bezos Expeditions, a venture capital company owned by Jeff Bezos.

In addition, there are several investors in Southeast Asia who participate, namely Gojek, Northstar Group, AC Ventures, and Citius investors.

Past investors such as Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed India, Alter Global and Quona Capital also participated. Besides Ula, there are several startups targeting warungs.

BukuWarung, for example, is supported by big investors such as East Ventures, Rocketship.vc, Quona Capital, Tanglin Venture Partners, AC Ventures, Y Combinator, Sampoerna, Golden Gate Ventures, and Partners of DST Capital.

There’s also GudangAda backed by Sequoia Alpha JWC, Capital India, Wavemaker Partners, Falcon Edge and Asia Partners,. This stall digitizing startup posted transactions or monthly GMV of US$ 600 million or around Rp 8.7 trillion last year.