Baby e-store Tororo is the new startup from Kaskus CEO Ken Dean Lawadinata
Tororo.com, an e-commerce site that sells baby products online, is Kaskus CEO’s Ken Dean Lawadinata new startup. The startup is self-funded and has been in operation since late February, with over 30 employees.
Ken says that In the last eight months he has been splitting his time between Kaskus and Tororo. Besides good time management skills, Ken credited his staff for making this journey smoother.
“I have a team in place [at Tororo] consisting of experienced [people] in the retail chain such as Carrefour and Lotte. With that I can separate my time between this project and Kaskus,” he said.
ネット上で赤ちゃん用品を販売するeコマースサイトのTororo.comは、KaskusのCEOであるKen Dean Lawadinata氏の新しいスタートアップである。このスタートアップは資金を自己調達し、昨2月から従業員30人超で運営している。
Ken氏はこの8か月間、Kaskusとand Tororoの間で時間を割いてきたという。彼の優れた時間管理スキルに加えて、Ken氏はその行動をスムーズに進められるスタッフを信用していた。
「私には [ Tororoに] CarrefourやLotteなどの小売チェーンに経験のある[人] から成るチームがいます。それで私は自分の時間をこのプロジェクトとKaskusの間で使えるのです」と彼は述べた。
ベビー用品のインターネット通販を行なうeコマースサイト「Tororo.com」が、「Kaskus (CEO:Ken Dean Lawadinata) 」から新設された。自己資金を投じて、今年2月より社員30数名を率いての新稼動となった。
Ken氏によると、過去8ヶ月間はKaskusとTororoにすべての時間を費やしてきたという。時間管理能力を養う良い機会だったことに加え、今回のスムーズな船出ができたのはスタッフたちのおかげと断言する。
「CarrefourやLotteといった小売店チェーンでの経験(をもつスタッフ)の存在で、(Tororoの)チームワークはとても良い。そのため、私はこのプロジェクトとKaskusを切り離して時間を使うことができる」とKen氏は語る。
In our last Startup Asia Jakarta conference, we understood that Kaskus, Indonesia’s largest online forum, is seeing over 28 million unique visits each month. Despite having the experience running a site as huge as Kaskus, Ken says that running an e-commerce company like Tororo poses a different challenge as his team needs to understand the entire chain of process such as shipping, product storage, and customer service. “I won’t say that one is harder than the other, but both present quite a challenging yet different kinds of tasks,” he said.
The whats and whys
Through Tororo, Ken hopes to bring quality baby products not just to big cities in Indonesia but also to the smaller and rural areas of the country where access to quality products is limited.
He also said that the existing baby e-commerce sites in Indonesia are focusing on fashion, luxury, and lifestyle whereas Tororo is dedicated to offering fundamental core baby products such as milk powder and diapers. He explains:
Tororo’s long term goal isn’t just sales; [we want] to increase the quality and standard of living of families by giving them access to wide range of products with a price that is as cheap as [buying] it in cities like Jakarta or Surabaya. […] We believe that online shops like us will become a game changer on [fulfilling] their needs.
Ken’s thoughts remind me a bit of Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Jack Ma previously said that because infrastructure in China is poor, e-commerce sites have become the “main course” for many Chinese people to purchase products that they would otherwise have to travel long hours to big cities to get. The same situation is also seen in Indonesia. But perhaps e-commerce sites in Indonesia face greater logistical challenges as the nation is made up of over 17,000 islands.
Tororo’s traction has been pretty decent so far, especially for a founder who is running two companies at the same time. In eight months, Ken said that his new baby e-commerce startup is currently seeing around 50,000 unique visitors and generating over $200,000 in transaction value each month. Tororo is also used by local Indonesian celebrities like Dian Sastro and Nia Ramadhani.
In the Indonesian baby e-commerce space, Tororo faces competition from Bilna.com, a local baby e-commerce startup that received seed funding in November last year.
インドネシアのベビーeコマース業界において、Tororoの競合相手はBilna.comという現地ベビーeコマースのスタートアップで、この会社は昨年11月にシードファンドを受けた。
インドネシアのベビー用品eコマース界では、Tororoは昨年11月にシード資金を受けた地元のベビー用品eコマース・スタートアップであるBilna.comとの競争に直面している。
startup=新設としてしまいました。「スタートアップ」でお願いします。ガイドラインの確認漏れです。申し訳ございません。以後気をつけます。