Infonesia users can invite other users to “eavesdrop” and take a look at their question, which had been answered by a public figure, for a price
Indonesian Q&A platform Infonesia has raised an undisclosed seed funding round from 500 Startups.
The Jakarta-based startup plans to use the new funding for talent acquisition (particularly for marketing and engineering team) and marketing efforts.
Infonesia considers itself as a knowledge-sharing platform, where users can interact with primary information source such as celebrities, experts, or even the common people through series of questions and answers.
The questions are being answered in photo and 60-second audio format, and Infonesia allows users to make money from the platform.
Users (the person who is being asked) can set a price to respond to a question using “diamonds” that are then converted to Indonesian Rupiahs. Askers whose paid questions have been answered by the source can also invite as many people as possible to “eavesdrop” and take a look at the questions and answers for the price of one diamond or IDR1,000 ($0.10).
Both the source and the askers receive a percentage off the total revenue.
For the moment, Infonesia said it already has over 30 sources on its platform, all of them coming from the showbiz and entertainment sector. The startup is looking forward to expand to other sectors.
In a press statement, the startup said that its value proposition is the primary sources, who are able to provide information or news that is “not deducted from what other people say or assume (i.e gossip portals or internet forums).”
“Everyone has the right to get the information they seek wherever they are and whenever they need to. Moreover, everyone has a story to tell, and expertise and experiences to share. This is something valuable that can potentially benefit a lot of people,” said Infonesia CEO Ihsan Fadhlur Rahman.
“That benefit can be utilised to earn some extra money too,” he added.
Launched in May on Google Play Store, Infonesia claimed that the app has been downloaded for more than 10,000 times and has served a total of 30,000 questions. Out of those questions, over 7,500 unique listeners played them more than 110,000 times.
In an e-mail to e27, Rahman elaborated how the company’s strategy for user acquisition, for both the source and asker’s side.
“For supply side, we have an exclusive deal that we’ve prepared for leading Indonesian influencers (celebs, public figure, experts). Our upcoming launch for iOS will be a big boost as most of our hot shot respondents are iphone users. In addition, they’re ready to refer our products as naturally our model has a great incentive for people to refer both for download and become eavesdroppers to a user’s response,” he explained.
“For demand side, the next several months we’re going to focus mainly on digital marketing (Google and Facebook products). Demand side is highly influenced by hot shot respondents too so we’re still focusing on creating a stable product and new features based on early customers feedbacks. Also expect great campaigns that our team is going to launch in the upcoming months,” the CEO continued.
So how does Infonesia plan to compete with existing Q&A platform such as AskFM and Quora?
“Keep offering a new experience in knowledge-sharing and a business model with strong money element that also benefit more stakeholders in our platform. Create ultra-localised content tailored to Indonesian market. Hiring experienced marketer with first hand experience in launching new product and business in Indonesia. Expand our engineers, the best talents in Indonesia,” Rahman answered.
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Image Credit: dolgachov / 123RF Stock Photo
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