Indonesia Weekly Review: 5 Archipelago Stories You Cannot Miss This Week [12 December – 17 December]

As Indonesia gears up for celebration, the country’s startup scene shows no signs of slowing down. The following are some of the developments made this week that Inc42 managed to gather:

Singaporean startup Airfrov enters Indonesia

A platform that allows travellers to bring back overseas products, Singapore-based Airfrov has officially been launched in Indonesia. After operating in Singapore for one-and-a-half years, the startup is said to see opportunities in the large number of travellers crossing Indonesian borders, dailysocial.id reported.

Users can access it via a website and mobile app, requesters can directly post the items they want and the fees they offer. Then the  travellers respond to their requests. Airfrov will handle the payment from the requester and keep it until the items have been paid for. Travellers will receive their money after the products have arrived in the requesters’ hands.

Launched in Singapore in early 2015, Airfrov is said to have more than 95,000 active users, some of whom reside in Indonesia. It has held a soft launch event in August and claimed to have received more than 1,000 offers from 150 travellers.

A similar service is also offered by local Indonesian startup, Bistip.

Amazon Set To Launch Prime Video Service In Indonesia

The online video streaming platform arm of the ecommerce giant, Amazon has announced that it is expanding to 200 countries, Indonesia being one of them. The service will be available for Indonesian viewers for $2.99 during the promotional period.

It will be a serious contender to Netflix, which entered the market earlier this year. There are also several Asia-based platforms such as iflix, HOOQ, and Viu.

Indonesian bookstore chain buys ecommerce startup Scoop

Kompas Gramedia, a Jakarta-based bookstore chain acquired Scoop, an e-book startup from Indonesia.

The acquisition was a move to complement Kompas Gramedia’s ecommerce marketplace (which sells lifestyle products like stationary, household products and books), reported e27.

Scoop, which has a strong mobile presence, has been downloaded by 6 Mn people, has around 400 publishers and over 30,000 books on its platform. Scoop will be fully integrated into Kompas Gramedia moving forward.

Career Platform Karir.com Announces Two New Features

Online career counselling platform, Karir.com has announced two new features.

The first one will be an online interview feature, which allows jobseekers and employers to conduct recorded or live video interviews. The feature is aimed to ease employers in managing interviews, while also enabling employers from other cities or even countries to search for talent in Indonesia. It will be formally launched in 2017.

The second one is the Salary Benchmark 2.0, a feature which enables jobseekers to research for salary range within various industries, as well as a mortgage instalment calculator. For the mortgage instalment calculator, Karir.com is working together with Rumah123 as a non-exclusive partner.

SaleStock scores top position in Indonesia’s best startups to work for list

Indonesian online job-seekers community platform Jobplanet released the best and most wanted companies to work for in Indonesia list for the year 2016, a result of a survey of 47,000 employees in 43,200 companies between November 2015 and October 2016.

The top companies in the list are shortlisted based on employee satisfaction level, as expressed through reviews on Jobplanet’s platform, which provides information for job-seekers on different aspects such as salary and benefit, career path, and management.

Divided into startups and corporation categories, the following are the list of best companies to work for list for startup categories:

1. Sale Stock Indonesia (Overall score: 4.38 out of 5.00)
2. Global Digital Niaga (Blibli.com) (Overall score: 4.31 out of 5.00)
3. Tokopedia (Overall score: 4.19 out of 5.00)
4. Traveloka Indonesia (Overall score: 4.11 out of 5.00)
5. Matahari Mall (Overall score: 4.00 out of 5.00)
6. Go-Jek (Overall score: 3.91 out of 5.00)
7. Kreatif Media Karya (Overall score: 3.64 out of 5.00)
8. Lazada Indonesia (Overall score: 3.59 out of 5.00)