So I saw this on the way to work, and was pretty much following the truck for almost 15 minutes.
I now have half a mind to turn vegetarian....
Monday, June 11, 2012
Half a mind to turn Vegetarian
So I saw this on the way to work, and was pretty much following the truck for almost 15 minutes.
I now have half a mind to turn vegetarian....
Friday, March 9, 2012
My Jakarta: Didit Sucahyo, Train Operator
What was you worst experience of getting stuck?
It was around five years ago. I was running an evening economy-class train and there was this fallen tree blocking my path because of a heavy downpour. As the ‘captain,’ I couldn’t abandon the train and had to wait for six hours, until 2 a.m. when the tree was finally cleared from the rails, before I could continue the trip to the final station.
Did the passengers wait, too?
No, when a train is stuck for a long time in whatever scenario, the machinist usually suggests that passengers abandon it and take another form of transportation. What hit me the most was that there was this passenger who stayed and waited. As it turns out, he spent the last of his money for the train ticket and had no more money to get home. That was very sad.
What do you do when people climb up on the train roof?
In economy class, when traffic is low, usually around noon, we often yell and threaten to cancel the trip if they don’t climb down, which usually works.
But in the early morning or late afternoon when the train is fully packed with passengers, yelling at hundreds of ‘train surfers’ or threatening to stop the trip will just get me killed [laughs]. The worst thing is that this happens not because they can’t afford the ticket — because they can. They say they climb up for the breeze, and some of them even play cards up there; it’s just unbelievable.
It was around five years ago. I was running an evening economy-class train and there was this fallen tree blocking my path because of a heavy downpour. As the ‘captain,’ I couldn’t abandon the train and had to wait for six hours, until 2 a.m. when the tree was finally cleared from the rails, before I could continue the trip to the final station.
Did the passengers wait, too?
No, when a train is stuck for a long time in whatever scenario, the machinist usually suggests that passengers abandon it and take another form of transportation. What hit me the most was that there was this passenger who stayed and waited. As it turns out, he spent the last of his money for the train ticket and had no more money to get home. That was very sad.
What do you do when people climb up on the train roof?
In economy class, when traffic is low, usually around noon, we often yell and threaten to cancel the trip if they don’t climb down, which usually works.
But in the early morning or late afternoon when the train is fully packed with passengers, yelling at hundreds of ‘train surfers’ or threatening to stop the trip will just get me killed [laughs]. The worst thing is that this happens not because they can’t afford the ticket — because they can. They say they climb up for the breeze, and some of them even play cards up there; it’s just unbelievable.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Mybox
The business by Mybox cannot be more examplary of the quote by Warren Buffett,' Buy commodities, sell brands'.
Mybox is pretty much a homegrown business, probably by a young Indonesian lady, who realized that there must be a better solution to organizing her shoes closet? In this case, there is no better way than Mybox: kotak sepatu transparent ajaib, or otherwise translated as the 'transparent magic shoe box'!
Marketing Tools:
- Website: Considering there is a decency to purchase a domain rather than using one of the free domain hosts, the website has a page rank of, wait for it.... 0! Only available in Bahasa Indonesian, the website is a simple 1-page interface, with no sort of visitor interaction. It is purely, a 1-page information website.
- Facebook: With a fanbase of 111,851 members, this is a very impress & pretty successful fan page! If you are probably thinking that 111,850 members are sleeping members, you are wrong!
Product Range:
- 1 product only! Although available in 4 colors, at the end of the day, its really only 1 product!
Last but not least, my lesson learnt from Mybox:
1. Find a niche product
2. Market
3. Sell
4. Earn
If only it was as easy as it looks. Time to sift through Alibaba.com!.
Dear Mybox founder, thumbs up to you!
P.S. This is not a 'business' advertorial for Mybox
Mybox is pretty much a homegrown business, probably by a young Indonesian lady, who realized that there must be a better solution to organizing her shoes closet? In this case, there is no better way than Mybox: kotak sepatu transparent ajaib, or otherwise translated as the 'transparent magic shoe box'!
Marketing Tools:
- Website: Considering there is a decency to purchase a domain rather than using one of the free domain hosts, the website has a page rank of, wait for it.... 0! Only available in Bahasa Indonesian, the website is a simple 1-page interface, with no sort of visitor interaction. It is purely, a 1-page information website.
- Facebook: With a fanbase of 111,851 members, this is a very impress & pretty successful fan page! If you are probably thinking that 111,850 members are sleeping members, you are wrong!
Product Range:
- 1 product only! Although available in 4 colors, at the end of the day, its really only 1 product!
Last but not least, my lesson learnt from Mybox:
1. Find a niche product
2. Market
3. Sell
4. Earn
If only it was as easy as it looks. Time to sift through Alibaba.com!.
Dear Mybox founder, thumbs up to you!
P.S. This is not a 'business' advertorial for Mybox
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Crash Course: Online Payments in Indonesia
The era of e-commerce is coming to Indonesia, and its definitely staying and thriving!
If anyone has noticed, e-commerce/online payments in Indonesia is quite difficult and limited in options. For my business, we've been using PayPal for almost 6 months, and it has been really great and easy with using the payment gateway for our customers. At the end of the day, we need to get the cashflow going, and we need payments coming in, in, in.... and timely!
3 features that we have been very satisfied with PayPal:
- Integrated payment buttons: These payment buttons look great and they are easy to integrate! See sample: http://www.jakartaairporttransfer.com/book-now.html.
- Payment Invoice: For customers that require customized invoices, with PayPal, we can easily issue an online invoice in 5 minutes! The invoice will be issued, sent to customer by PayPal, and the customer makes credit card payment from there directly.
- Pay as you get paid: Unlike some payment gateways (i.e. RBS WorldPay), PayPal does not require merchants to make a fixed monthly fee. With PayPal, payment fees are according to your payments as received. This is very helpful for start-ups & SMEs on a cost point of view.
However, a BIG minus point, is the hefty commission fees! PayPal commission fees are often pegged onto a percentage of between 5-10%, depending on the country of credit card used. Yes, you didn't read wrongly, 10%. This makes much difference to our margin, and we have to absorb the cost on behalf of our customers. On top of that, PayPal does not recognize Indonesian Rupiah currency! So we've been searching for other alternative and cost-effective online payment gateways from Indonesia. In the past year or so, there has been a spring-up of different private organizations tapping onto the e-commerce scene in Indonesia. The local banks such as BCA & Mandiri is definitely also catching up on the trend! They have established affiliates with big e-commerce sites such as Kaskus, Disdus, Garuda Indonesia, DealKeren etc.
Current payment gateway players in Indonesia, and I'm sure that more are coming up!
Current payment gateway players in Indonesia, and I'm sure that more are coming up!
- Unik.com: One of the newest player, Unik was first launched in December 2011.
- iPaymu.com: iPayMu integrates your online business with 87 banks & ATMS across Indonesia.
- IndoMog.com: A specialized online payment gateway for the Indonesia's videogame industry. IndoMog adheres to a 'pay & top-up' system.
- KasPay.com
- Doku.com
- KlikPay BCA
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Friday, December 23, 2011
"Yes at blow fish"
I hope that 5 years down the road, I can tweet the same thing as Tony Fernandes did on Twitter... "Yes at blow fish"
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Link Advertising with Expedia ID
We must be doing something right with the JAT website.
We are approached by TravelAdBuyers.com, a representative from Expedia Indonesia to promote their Indonesian website. They offered a nominal sum for Expedia link (one sentence embed) advertising on our website. I would actually have done this for free, with a mutual link exchange. Oh wells, the money subsidises our domain purchase for at least another 5 years ;)
We are approached by TravelAdBuyers.com, a representative from Expedia Indonesia to promote their Indonesian website. They offered a nominal sum for Expedia link (one sentence embed) advertising on our website. I would actually have done this for free, with a mutual link exchange. Oh wells, the money subsidises our domain purchase for at least another 5 years ;)
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