Bringing social-service apps to the market

Liza Yosephine & Arif Gunawan S.

If you are an expat who happens to stay in Jakarta and needs to survive in those busy crowded public transportation, an android-based application will help you. Or you are a mother who needs to see your children comply with the school’s program? An application is available for you, too.

In this digital era, one can simply create a Rp1 million (US$ 70) gadget into a “magical” box containing a lot of applications (apps) and technical tips and information that will help you through your day.

And for Indonesia, a country where 250 million people predicted to have more than a gadget per person—on average, an app business becomes a big blue ocean for startup warriors.

This is what the local developers have seen, by creating their handy app. From the successful ones in the business-oriented startups such as Gojek, Traveloka, to the new comers such as Bulletinboard, Qlue and Apaja.

What those apps have in common is that they aim to save time. In today’s instantaneous age, people thirsts of efficiency for everything, even in some tiny parts of life--which we did not even see them as a need some years ago.

Let’s put Gojek for example. Ten years ago, honestly, did you ever think about an app that will give you a handy access to your ojek, in an era when you can find ojek in almost every corner of Jakarta streets?

Startup developers start with that kind of idea which we might never have thought about. Unlike ordinary people who usually only see what people needs now, they have an ability to see what apps that help people to ease their life and in turns will become so handy that they put them as a need.

But a new trend appears. Not only creating a commercial-oriented app, some developers has created an app that providing a social service. It may be hard for us to think about the business-prospect of those social-oriented apps. But they did it.

Please check what BulletinBoard has created. A platform that connects school teachers and the parents of the students of a classroom together in a virtual group via the app. A virtual meeting hall for parents and teachers? Yes. And they have a legit reason for that.

According to a study, 85 percent of Indonesian families have both parents work around 10 hours a day, not including commute time. By the time they get home, they’ll be too tired to engage with their children.

Meanwhile, teachers have painstakingly taken the time to write each and every one of their student notices and reports to take home to their parents as their form of communication.

This app, according to BulletinBoard’s CEO Norman Ganto, created a beyond business-point of view, aimed to help parents and teachers in the country to use technology to maximize effort to evaluate and improve their children’s education process, specifically for preschool and elementary class.

“We cannot deny it anymore that we are competing against a global workforce. So, our job as educators, both parents and teachers, is that we have to make them ready to compete globally,” Norman told thejakartapost.com during an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

Melinda Sari, a playgroup teacher at Sekolah Harapan Bangsa, can attest to the beneficial aspects of the app. It helps her a lot to have a better, efficient, and effective communication with the parents of her student.

Public Pressure
Now, let’s take a higher level of interest, from the educational level to the governance level. There is even an app for us, too, to communicate with the government. In Indonesia where a bureaucracy is like a trivia quiz, and makes you feel like a lost in space when you are dealing with them? Yes.

TerralogiQ, a Google Enterprise geo-spatial technology solution provider, creates Qlue. Launched in December 2014 by Rama Raditya and Andre Hutagalung, Qlue works in partnership with the Jakarta Smart City program, enabling Jakarta citizens to report complaints, dissatisfaction and even violations.

“It’s helpful, specifically for Jakarta citizen. It simplifies the bureaucracy, which has been too complex for a report filing, to one-stop service system. I wish all the reports will be responded immediately. And all this time, they are quite responsive” said a user named Imam Wahyudi, giving a testimony after using the app.

With this app, Imam can even file his complaint in the form of pictures which will be seen directly by government officials and all the users of the app. Any and all complaints are to be addressed by related governing bodies in the area, to facilitate public pressure.

The app, along with Jakarta Smart City program, aim to increase municipal government’s transparency and accountability in the digital era. They rank governance units from best to worst, depending on how many and how quickly they respond to complaints and settle the problem.

“In the future we will release several applications and several solutions related to mobility, which we actually just released last week with Qlue Transit, and then there will be ones about safety, education, health and so on,” said TerralogiQ’s CEO Rama Raditya.

Another locally created app that has partnered up with the government is Apaja. Assisting its users in navigating Jakarta with public transport from metromini, kopaja, to cozy busses. It provides them with the route plan, crowd level information, calculating time and distance, estimating the travel cost.

The team behind this app has recently started a collaboration with the Jakarta city administration in planning school bus routes for primary and high school students. Right now, they have successfully tracked down 71 school buses and plan to add 50 more in the future.

Those apps are creative, beneficial, handy, and—the most fantastic part for the consumers—free. It is like you have several personal assistants in one box. Who would reject such facility? Human, loves to have a service which easing their life.

A service, that what makes app like Gojek, Traveloka, etc, successful. They provide handy services to the people, and then after grabbing massive attentions and large amount of users, investors will come and there goes the fun part of it; the fortunes.

But how to upgrade those social-oriented apps to a fortunes creating machine? That would be the next question and challenge that those startup warriors would have to, again, creatively think about. As for now, let us celebrate the free-flow of social services in our palm hand. (ags)