Indonesian Startup UrbanIndo Raises Funds

East Ventures Alpha Invests in Online Property Retail Startup Company

Indonesian based UrbanIndo is one of the latest startup companies that is awarded funding by East Ventures Alpha. Established in May 2011, UrbanIndo.com aims to connect property agents or sellers to property buyers through the internet. The company’s vision is to become the leading online real estate website in Indonesia.

UrbanIndo hopes to achieve this goal through innovative marketing techniques and quality customer service. The site will also provide clients with a posting management system that will allow them to monitor their postings easily and inform them how well such postings are doing

The startup boasts of having a team of well-trained and experienced professionals who will be on hand to help companies setting up operations in Indonesia. UrbanIndo aims to become not only a landlord but to also act as partner for the growth of IT in Indonesia.

East Ventures Alpha, which is considered as the first venture capitalist company investing in Indonesian startups is a new venture company , having been set up In July 2011.  It has wasted no time in working for its main objective that is to serve the needs of businesses involved in the tech center and help promote the development of the Indonesian IT industry. 

The official announcement is expected to be released this afternoon and as part of the deal, East Venture’s  Chandra Tjan will be joining the board of directors of UrbanIndo. There has been no disclosure as to the amount of funding until now but UrbanIndo is set to receive Series A funding from East Ventures. The said grant is earmarked for research and marketing program. This will include establishing cooperation with the Indonesian academe like professors and srudents of  ITB or Binus to help build UrbanIndo’s cutting edge features.

The UrbanIndo site went online in November 2011 and has registered decent growth since then. After six months, it has already attracted over 100,000 visitors and now has real estate listings numbering over 10,000 properties. 

Arip Tirta, CEO of UrbanIndo, declared in a statement that “What we are doing is unprecedented amongst online property sites in Indonesia. We are trying to modernize how Indonesians look for property. We are really big in analyzing the data that we have to help our users find, sell, or rent their property in the best way possible.”

At present, the team is composed of five people and the company is based in Bandung, Indonesia.  CEO Arip Tirta was the former director of investment analyst and strategy at Hercules Technology Growth Capital (HTGC). This is an investment firm in Silicon Valley worth US$1.0 billion. 

In an interview with TechInAsia, The UrbanIndo CEO  reminisce about his Silicon Valley experience as follows:

“For seven years at HTGC, I was instrumental in completing investments worth more than $2 billion in about 150 technology companies in the US. I received a bachelor of science in mathematics of computation from UCLA, and a master of science in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University.”

UrbanIndo is also set to release UrbanIndo SmartGuide. This is a tool to watch any change in the price range of of a property’s vicinity. It has another facility called UrbanIndo Pick that can display the featured property based on a specific algorithm.

With competitors that include; rumah123.com, rumah.com, rumahdanproperti.com, rumahku.com, and kolomrumah.com, and property listings sites such as Kaskus and Tokobagus, UrbanIndo is facing a tough challenge ahead.