Location-based mobile community marketplace for tasks and errands Mila has raised 3 million Swiss Francs ($3.22 million) from a consortium of private Swiss and German technology investors, including Peter Zencke and Adrian Bult. Mila plans to expand to Indonesia, including opening new office in Jakarta in near future, as it’s seen to be potential market for this service. Mila is currently available around the world and in particular Germany, Switzerland, Indonesia and China.
“We believe that there should be an easy, convenient way for friendly people in their local communities to help each other get more done. With Mila, you can now connect with people around you offering services, or you can earn extra cash by offering your own services or time to those in your neighborhood,” says Mila CEO Manuel Grenacher.
Peter Zencke, long-time executive board member of multinational enterprise software firm SAP and German technology investor, says in the press release, “The sharing economy is a powerful trend that will revolutionize community commerce. We are pleased to have led the investment in Mila — whom we believe, given their heritage in creating and growing successful mobile platforms — are well placed to help reshape the very way local business is conducted amongst neighbours. Mila’s strong growth and enthusiastic uptake by both local buyers and sellers shows the massive potential of the peer-to-peer economy.”
Basically Mila is a platform for services that helps to get on top of your tasks. The application offers a simple way to connect with people from your neighborhood. It’s possible to post a task or browse services (or products) from providers and pay from smartphone.
When a person posts a request for a service or for a task to be accomplished to Mila – for example, to build a flat-packed bed, to help clear an overgrown garden, or to install a wireless network at home – local businesses and people can offer to provide or fulfill it. Mila provides a convenient place for the transaction to take place and payments are made safely through Paypal.
Jan Alther, Director of Marketing at Mila, gives us some details about Mila’s expansion in Indonesia:
We have started the operation of the platform as you can see it on Mila website by last week. The Indonesian localisation is in progress, the website is running in Bahasa and by next week we will upload the Bahasa explanatory movie. Mila is available around the globe, whereas we have defined some “hotspots” where we want to concentrate our efforts on. Indonesia and especially Jakarta counts among these hotspots. Being one of the fastest growing regions worldwide and with rapid development of mobile web and payment and a high affinity of entrepreneurship, we think Indonesia offers good potential for a platform like Mila.
At the moment we are advancing our Asia operation from Shanghai. Among the team we have an Indonesian co-worker concentrating on localisations and bringing in the voice of South-East Asia. During the next months, we will further develop the product and put our efforts into building up the necessary product features and subsequently start building up relevant user bases. At this stage we have integrated Paypal as a payment system and are now working on further integrations like IPAYMU. We plan to open an office in Jakarta in the near future, at the same time, we are in negotiations with a local partner to distribute the app for Android and iOS in Indonesia (apps are under development).
Outsourcing system like Mila and freelance job markets will always be welcomed in Indonesia since it offers broad opportunity to scoop project with local services.
