Plasa.com & Mojopia, End of My Journey

Today I officially announced that I am no longer the Chief Innovation Officer of Plasa.com & Mojopia. I am grateful to be a part of Telkom family for almost 2 years, the giant Indonesian legacy that owns Plasa.com. It's also a relieve to get back to my entrepreneur life, in which I have the freedom to have more personal time and inspire others.

Together with Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo, we completed the eBay and Microsoft as being the most crucial and most important partnerships for Plasa.com. I think the ultimate legacy that we have achieved was mapping Plasa.com as a serious and prominent ecommerce player in the country by bringing eBay brand to be in exclusive partnership with Plasa.com.

Looking back the experience, my biggest doubt was whether I am ready to be part of Telkom culture that will be very different to my entrepreneur life. One key thought that helps me to decide was the opportunity to build something meaningful for Indonesia, a platform in which the future creative entrepreneur will be born. This was something that I have been working for the longest time.

We were given the vision of superportal, where we can find various Internet services. After a few round of discussion, we agreed it’s hard to enter a market without a very focus objective, so we decided to focus on ecommerce first. We believe that Indonesia needs ecommerce to be the platform for creative entrepreneurs. We have to invest early on positioning Plasa.com to build this value proposition.

But given the business consideration, it’s hard to see ecommerce will take off as a profitable and sustainable business in a short period of time. In the end, we decided to mix three business model altogether, in which we build Content Provider in the short time to get our financial engine working, then we provide Digital Advertising services and build our advertising inventory, lastly to build the Ecommerce platform that will be sustainable and scalable in the long run.

We came up with Mojopia name to be used as content and advertising services. Aligning with Telkomsel content strategy that will concentrate on sport content, we are able to secure Barclay Premiere League as the Official Mobile Partner and starting to monetize the content through Telkomsel. We are yet to tap the big potential offered by this premium intellectual property rights.

To build our value proposition in ecommerce, we approach eBay to do the Cross Border Trading, in which we recruit merchant from Indonesia and sell the products globally through eBay. Soon we are rolling the aggregation services to help the not so ready Indonesian Small Medium Enterprise to sell online. A friend at eBay says this: successful partnership is not from the company behind it, but the people behind it. Our team at Plasa has bring so much value on this partnership and I hope we leave a strong partnership with the giant in ecommerce.

We are also left with the email legacy from the old days of Plasa.com. Having Microsoft as our partner is truly a remarkable achievement. We are really happy to join forces combining our users and Microsoft technology. With the right direction, this email services easily become one of the most sought after solution for education.

Quoting from “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hshieh – the founder of Zappos.com, he mention that the real asset is the business pipeline, not only the people. People can come and go, and company have to stand on its own. So, we have to build a business process in which it’s not depend so much on the people, but everyone will contribute to build the building blocks to strengthen the pipeline.

I believe I have infused the spirit of creative entrepreneurship inside the organization. And Telkom teach me how to be accountable and working with massive scale. I have spent almost 2 years of my life working side by side with my team at Plasa.com & Mojopia. They are the poster child of this new wave industry, combining the creative entrepreneurship and the scale needed to make it truly as a creative industry. I envision to build a strong foundation for Indonesian creative entrepreneur, now I expect somebody to take over the torch to make it really big.

It's time for me to move on now. I don't want to say good bye to Plasa.com & Mojopia, since I will look at them closely as they are dear to my heart. And to my beloved team at Plasa.com & Mojopia, we will work closely again soon! Thanks to everybody at Telkom, I learn as much as I contribute to this family. And thanks to my best friend, Shinta, to realize both of our vision together!