If you’re thinking that a good business plan must be able to bring benefit in a blink of an eye, you might want to reconsider. Dwarapala, free online store provider, hasn’t done any monetization since its launching until today. Even so, Dwarapala’s business plan managed to get through the final round of ‘I Dare’ business plan competition held by Global Innovation Through Science and Technology (GIST).
Dwarapala is founded by Piti Irawan, Anita Jacobson, and Diki Irawan in April 2011. Dwarapala – means keeper or guardian in Sanskrit – provides easier online store. It means Dwarapala provides easier, faster and free online store service affordable by everybody. Dwarapala’s founder sees Indonesia to have many high-qualified product potentials and trying to help SMEs to sell their products through the internet.
In addition to easiness, Dwarapala also offers some features for its users. Online store owner at Dwarapala can customize their store’s look using many themes provided to suit their product and target market. Other than that, Dwarapala also provides inventory tracking system feature so store owner can monitor the stock.
Dwarapala also has other features such as integration with Facebook and Twitter, order management system, automatic email for seller and buyer, also mobile look support. The newest one is Dwarapala’s system now supports 16 currencies.
In its operation, Dwarapala is assisted by Fandy Susanto and Rully Jatmiko Table-Six as creative consultant. Today, Dwarapala has more than 1,600 members and growing. Diki Irawan, Dwarapala’s CEO hopes that Dwarapala’s existence can fix the e-commerce map in Indonesia because by having the chance to own an online store, business owner can be free from dependency of online promotion from marketplace provider and classified ads service.
In the future, Dwarapala will keep trying to upgrade its service and adds new features for its users. Dwarapala will also try to discuss with many companies and startups to be able to form cooperation in some strategic issues. Let’s hope for the best for Dwarapala in the final round of ‘I Dare’ competition.
