Bdigital Features in Globe Asia
Have you heard of BDigital? BDigital provides a complete solution to support SMEs in all types of business in Indonesia. Their motto of serving the local first means more than just effective sales, they aim to improve the productivity of SMEs so that the economy can becomes more developed and prosperous. Their service includes website design, online marketing, social media management, human resource accounting. BDigital is a startup that was created here in Kejora HQ along with other startups such as YDigital Asia, Etobee and many more. It has recently celebrated their first anniversary and has started to establish itself in the digital industry. With their competitive pricing plan and their quality customer service, they have shown amazing growth since the creation of their startup. Not long ago, BDigital were featured in one of the cover story articles in the renowned Indonesian business magazine. Read on to learn more about BDigital. There's no doubt that it will be entertainment read and you may even find yourselves with a handful of new insights you can apply to your own business.
Bridging the Digital Divide for SMEs
by By : gimbar.maulana | on 11:11 AM March 02, 2016
New tech start-up bDigital is hoping to tap Indonesia’s vast array of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) by providing an affordable full-service online strategy that helps these companies compete in the digital era. By Shoeb Kagda
Indonesia has its own share of technology start-up companies that are making headlines. Names such as Berrybenka, Blibli, Go-jek and Tokopedia are all making waves in disrupting established businesses. But while these companies set the pace for the new digital age, there are millions of small- and medium-sized companies that need help to get online. Many of these businesses are well-established but if they do not have an online presence or they do not adapt to the digital age, their future is bleak.
Recognizing this need and realizing that SMEs presented an enormous business opportunity, three men set out to create an online platform that could offer such companies an affordable means to expand their digital presence.
bDigital was founded in February 2015 with initial seed funding from Mountain Kejorato cater to this market. Not only has the company succeeded in doing what it set out to do, it has done so well over the past 12 months that it is now looking for serious investors.
The company has more than 100 clients and already nearly 4,000 SMEs are using its platform. “Clients can use our platform to build their website and they can have different revisions at no additional cost,” says Ricardo Santos, managing director and one of the founders.
With a rich background in IT and digital marketing, Santos arrived in Indonesia two years ago from Portugal, leading several start-ups to success. But wanting to do more, he teamed up with Boye Hartmann, a Danish marketing and mobile expert, and Arvid Yap, a Dutch/Indonesian/Chinese ethnic mixture, to found bDigital. “We want to help SMEs in a deeper way to succeed online,” Santos notes. “The reason we are targeting SMEs is because we saw the need for the 55 million SMEs inthe country to gain more customers from the internet. What bDigital offers is a little bit of everything at a rock-bottom price. It can help an SME such as a dentist or even a hairdresser to set up a website, promote its service online as well as digitalize all its accounting and financial functions.
“We had a very successful campaign with Gratia Moneychanger as evidence of what online marketing can do,” says Santos. “We helped the company develop its website as well as create an online marketing platform and within a month the owner was generating Rp100 million in revenue on an investment of Rp6 million.” The company is now working on version 2 of its platform where for just Rp250,000 a month, a client can receive unlimited reservations and bookings on their mobile app, which Santos says is a huge step calls on their mobile app, which Santos says is a huge step for the company.
Other planned features include a digital loyalty program, CRM (customer relationship management) system, email marketing and soical media management tools.
Store in a desert
With the proliferation of websites, Santos notes that companies today need to go beyond just setting up a corporate website if they wish to exist in the digital world. The key is to drive customers to the website, which is where digital marketing becomes critical.
“A website is a store in the desert,” he says. “And if you do not have content details, it’s a closed store in the desert so companies must have relevant content and need to drive customers to the website.”
These are basic steps for companies that wish to maximize their online presence, notes Arvid Yap, who recently returned to Indonesia from Amsterdam where he specialized in digital marketing for SMEs. “In Europe having a website is a given but many SMEs in Indonesia still do not have websites,” he says. “For any digital strategy, one must start with a website and you build from there.”
“Consider this. If bDigital is able to help 10 million SMEs generate $50 per month for 12 months, this would generate $6 billion in extra business for the country.”
With their services and their new investments, bDigital hopes to reach 10 million to 15 million SMEs, especially in the smaller cities around the country. Based on average subscription income, reaching 5 million SMEs would generate $655 million in revenue for the company.
“We want to help millions of SMEs, not just the 100,000 who are currently online,” says Arvid, who is head of production. “That is why we need version 2 of the platform.”
But measuring success of a digital strategy can be tricky for many SMEs as the benefits are not immediately visible. So what is the return on investment (ROI) for a company using bDigital’s services? “The ROI is that your business will still exist in five to ten years,” says Yap. “The world is changing fast and SMEs need to keep pace.”
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