Muhammad Fajrin Rasyid, one of the co-founders of Indonesian internet marketplace Bukalapak, said that e-commerce plays should be evaluated based on “unsubsidised” transactions, or total payment volume (TPV) or gross merchandise value (GMV) that exclude sales promotions such as vouchers or rebates.
“We don’t depend on the subsidised transactions at all,” he said, noting that Bukalapak’s unsubsidised transactions are more than half of its total transactions.
Fajrin, who was Bukalapak’s chief financial officer before being promoted to company president in 2018, was speaking at DealStreetAsia’s Indonesia PE-VC Summit 2020 in Jakarta on January 15.
He added that it was by choice that Bukalapak, which was founded in 2010 and was last valued at $2.5 billion, has raised less capital than its competitors.
Fajrin also said Bukalapak, which counts some three million mom-and-pop shops as its merchant partners, is focused on the entire retail sector in Indonesia, rather than just the e-commerce space, which only accounts for about 5% of the retail market.
Here are edited excerpts of the fireside chat with Fajrin:-
