During the Startup Asia 2014 event, Path’s Marketing Manager Ana LaRue revealed that the company plans to establish an office in Indonesia by 2015, after the new Country Manager gets elected, which will work with local designers to produce more local content, including by providing series of stickers. The company also works with “Path 50” as an early adopter to get feedback on feature(s) that being developed.
LaRue said that her and her team’s presence in Jakarta from November to next January is related to the administration process of licenses and other administrative stuffs required for the opening. Path has even been looking for the Country Manager since last October. The candidate should be someone who knows best about Indonesian market, experienced in social/mobile/e-commerce, and excels in marketing and public relations, since the chosen one will be responsible for almost everything, including to keep Path’s growth in Indonesia remains positive, monetize, and partner with local agencies and PR.
Statistically, the majority of Path users in Indonesia use Android to access the services. Therefore, during her time in Indonesia, LaRue tried accessing Path using Android device to get the feel that customers have. Her team partners with Path 50, a group of individuals who have access to Path’s features, and ask them to give feedback on the app. Path’s engineering team is also working hard to overcome technical problem related with slow connectivity in this country.
In average, a Path user only has 40 friends. However, as predicted, the standard doesn’t work for Indonesians, as they commonly have much more friends than 40. Thus, Path creates a new standard on this matter, as users may add up to 500 friends.
Unlike in the U.S and Canada where it enjoys fruitful success, Path has yet made its “Path Talk Places” service available in Indonesia. The service enables users to access public services, including food and hotel rooms reservation. Recently, the service has just been launched in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Ireland.
LaRue further wished that she and her team may get the opportunity to partner with brands that want to get in touch with communities, for the creation of stickers for instance. They don’t expect any hard selling done by brands, particularly because the engagement of Path users eventually exceeds the engagement made by other social media, even giants like Facebook or Twitter.
