Hot new’s coming through. PropertyGuru has just published a joint venture with Emtek Group’s subsidiary PT Kreatif Media Karya (KMK) as an attempt to develop Rumah, PropertyGuru’s property platform that has served more than two million customers in Indonesia. The partnership was broadcasted just today (25/9) at the SCTV Tower – Senayan City, Jakarta. By this partnership, KMK will acquire an undisclosed minor shares of PropertyGuru Indonesia. This would be Emtek Group’s second investment in Indonesia’s digital industry after previously granted a funding to Artoncode, a mobile gaming producer.
This partnership is seen as highly strategic for both parties and expected to strengthen the position of Rumah in the Indonesia’s property market. Until this news was rolled out, Rumah had already served more than two million of buyers as well as 290.000 of properties, being offered by around 10.000 agencies all over Indonesia.
“Our vision for this online business is to serve people. It’s true that when we talk about Internet, we talk about so many things that we can do. However, we will lose our focus once we get to all those tasks at the same time. Based on this belief, we perceive Rumah as the champion of the property industry, thus helping them marketing their properties would be what we can do for them. To win local market, they need local people, and we are that local people. As we help them, they help us. They, the regional player in seven countries, let us to know their know how,” Adi Sariaatmadja, KMK’s CEO, told DailySocial.
KMK will also help Rumah in the way of providing a number of brand new business strategies and initiatives which are highly useful for the site’s growth. They will give a special access to various forms of media at Emtek (Elang Mahkota Teknologi), including television and digital products.
This partnership is expected to increase the number of Rumah’s viewers by 10 percent per month. In addition, KMK also plans to open a special channel for property and other related information on Liputan 6 news portal in which Rumah will be the one responsible for it.
In regard to the partnership, Steve Melhuish, PropertyGuru’s Co-Founder and CEO, regarded Indonesia as the largest market in Southeast Asia. By having around 250 million of people, US$ 868,3 billion of GDP by 2013 (which is predicted to have 5,5 to 5,8 percent of increase by this year), as well as 10 to 15 percent of real estate industry’s growth for the past five years, it has been predicted that there would be around 50 thousands of property agents in the country, who will spend around US$ 200 million per year to have their ads being posted on media. All those facts only show how big the potential of Indonesia’s property industry is.
One of Rumah’s strategies to have a taste of this tempting Indonesia’s industry market is to strengthen their access through mobile devices. According to them, Rumah is the first platform of its segment that has already developed a mobile app which is compatible with every kinds of devices available, including BlackBerry-based and iOS-based ones as well as the mobile web.
“According to our data, 45 percent of the visitors visit Rumah through their mobile devices. We plan to launch Android app by the end of this year,” Steve said.
