Indonesia is the ‘highest growth’ market for ShopBack

• Has given US$224,000 in total cashback to customers
• Looking to increase partnerships to 300 merchants this year

AFTER a year of operation in Indonesia, Singapore-based cashback startup ShopBack said that it has grown tremendously in the past year. According to country general manager Indra Yonathan (pic), Indonesia is the highest growth market for the startup.

ShopBack recently announced that they have given a total cashback value of Rp30 billion (US$224,551) to its one million online shoppers that have been using their platform in the past year.

In 2017, according to Indra the gameplan is not to chase quantity or focus on how many customers it can serve, but to improve the value of cashback contributions to each customer.

“We want to increase the number of services and/or products that can provide cashback. We are also hoping to increase the value of the cashback. Once people feel the benefits and realise they can get something back from their online purchase, then many more become our customers,” he told Digital News Asia (DNA) in an email.

For the past year, ShopBack has partnered with 150 e-commerce players, including Lazada, Bukalapak, Tokopedia, Orami, Blibli, and MatahariMall, and aims to double this number to 300 merchants and partners this year.

Even though the number of online shoppers in the country is not as significant and the online shopping value is below 1% of total retail value, this startup means to stay true to its roots by serving online shoppers and is not looking to partner with offline merchants.

When asked what the most popular categories of online shopping in terms of cashback claims are, Indra said almost everything, especially travel, where one customer can claim up to Rp4 million (US$299) in cashback from international hotel bookings.

“Although fashion and gadgets are still the most popular items for our customers, we are also seeing an increase in people buying electronic appliances and household items online,” he added.

The majority of ShopBack’s customers are in Jakarta and the surrounding areas that have become the centre of e-commerce players. They also have customers in Bandung, Surabaya, and Medan.

The secret according to Indra, is always to make customer experience a priority when they are accessing the platform. In mid last year, ShopBack launched its mobile application, and in six months, the number of people accessing ShopBack through the mobile app has increased. Currently 47% of customer orders come from the mobile app.

“This will also be our focus this year. We need to keep innovating, offering more interesting promotions for services and products, and improving our mobile app,” he added.

More education needed

Indra admitted that the startup’s biggest challenge in Indonesia lies is in educating the market on the benefits of the platform.

“Trying to get people to shop online is hard enough, now we need to ensure that they understand the cashback concept; where they can claim some money back if they shop online with our partner merchants.

“First, customers will always ask a lot of questions, and we have already trained our customer service to cater to this need. Once customers understand how it works, they get used to it,” he explained.

Educating the market goes hand in hand with educating the small and medium enterprise (SME) players too, according to Indra.

“We will have our industry social movement where if SME players have their own initial and basic e-commerce platform but no capital to promote it, we can look for ways to promote them through our platform,” he added.

The startup is targeting to partner with 500 SME e-commerce players across the country by the end of the year.

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