Q: Describe the business, core products and services in one paragraph


Creating a community of consumers that are targeted primarily with curated content, then return to the site frequently because of the social connectivity and sharing. This approach creates demand and hype for destinations, so each is overlaid with packaged travel solutions that will be easy to buy online.

Q: Who are your key customers?


Rising middle class of Indonesia & South East Asia tourists. Our consumers probably have a smart phone, are in their first or second job and have a strong network of friends. In fact they are probably on more than one social network and access them very frequently.  Our international consumers are most likely in South East Asia, Australia or Western Europe. They probably have been to Bali before but know very little else about the rest of Indonesia.

Q: What business are you most likely to be compared to?


Jetsetter meets Pinterest and the fancy.

Q: What problem are you trying to solve for your customers?

Make the decision of where to take your next holiday easier.

Q: What financial support did you have to launch the business?


Angel funding from Ardent Capital who have also been great mentors.

Q: Who validated the idea first – investors or customers?

Both. I pitched to a few investment groups, but also to industry people and saw what stuck. We have pivoted several times from our initial ideas, after pitching to focus groups and industry folk.

Q: What is the revenue model and strategy for profitability?

We help hotels monetization by marketing to consumers that they would not have otherwise reached (well wouldn’t have motivated). We take a margin from those sales. We will also explore advertising, but in a integrated manner.

Q: What is the market opportunity? How scalable is this business?


This is the biggest travel market in SEA in terms of volume of domestic travellers. The rise of the middle class is apparent with new malls opening on every corner and GDP strong from domestic consumption. We think this is the right space in the right market, which is always a nice perfect storm.

In terms of scalability, on the tech side we will be able to handle 10,000 transactions per day and will have multiple levels of automation in terms of payment gateways and procurement, so there is definitely room to scale. In regards to the product side we already have access to thousands of room nights directly with hotels and are getting a great response from hoteliers and groups that normally don’t work with the likes of deal sites and local OTA’s.

Q: Competitive analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

Strengths: 
1. New channel for merchants, they regard burufly as a social or lifestyle channel.
2. Intimate local digital and consumer knowledge mixed with international experience.
3. Design and imagery: we have over 2 terabytes already.
4. Unique editorial content: with the most complete destination guides in Indonesia
5. Booming travel market with almost 1000 new hotels being built across all of Indonesia.

Weaknesses:
1. Destinations unknown: Bali, Jakarta and Yogyakarta are top sellers but others require a lot of education.
2. International tourism: the growth potential for Burufly is from the 70million middle class. International tourists are less than a 1/2 of what Malaysia attract. This is a problem we would like to fix.
3. Perception that packaged is more expensive when in fact in comparison it is much more cost effective to buy bundled.
4. Low penetration of credit cards in market.

Opportunities:
1. Social Scaling: not having to pay for advertising on Google to grow audience. With Social deeply imbedded in the site and leveraging Facebook’s dominance in market we can grow virally.
2. Potential pivots once core business and partnerships with merchants is established.
3. User generated content: People love to share in Indonesia.
4. Airlines: tying up with one or two carriers to provide complete packages.
5. Technology targeting: our UI enables us to target users based on their clicking behavior (think ad targeting contextual and content based).

Threats:
1. Balance between social and e-commerce: not moving too far in either direction.
2. Agoda dominates the market and bullies merchants, market needs balance

Q: Who are the team members and advisors? 


Peter Goldsworthy – Founder and President Director – Ex Admax Network MD for Indonesia and Malaysia
Yann Fruchart – Co- founder and Operations & Travel Director – former Area Manager in France for Booking.com & E-commerce director Swiss Bell Hotel Group
Jaka Setia – Content Director – Ex Chief Editor of Panorama Tours Magazine
Syafrullah Djaya – Systems & UI Lead – Ex Living Social Indonesia systems lead
Shindi Packer – Advisor – President of Indonesia’s premier Travel Magazines: Majalah Tamasya & Journey Indonesia Magazine. CEO of Singgasana Hotels &
Resorts.
Ardent Capital – Incubators – Exited from Ensogo/Deal Keren, Admax Network & New Media Worldwide

Q: Why do you think you are the best people to make this vision happen?


Right mix of people with an intimate understanding of consumer behavior and industry trends mixed with the right technology and design strategy to succeed.

Q: What’s the motivation behind doing this?

Got very tired of people (including Indonesians) not being aware of the immense beauty of Indonesian destinations. We want to make deciding where to go and what to do in Indonesia easily bookable online and with great value packages. More than anything I want Indonesia to be the number one tourism destination in South East Asia. First country to beat is Malaysia, then Thailand.