BukuWarung teams up with NextBillion.ai to accelerate MSMEs’ digital transformation

Indonesia has over 60 million MSMEs that contribute to around 60% of the country’s $1.1 trillion GDP. A majority of these traditional businesses want to move online. However, MSMEs in Indonesia face hurdles in digital transformation as most of the solutions are not developed for their specific business needs. The majority of marketplaces are built for larger enterprises and businesses; not tailored for MSMEs. Indonesian fintech startup BukuWarung aims to bridge that gap by partnering with Singapore-based enterprise mapping platform NextBillion.ai.

BukuWarung’s eCommerce platform Tokoko aims to help underserved merchants, who are ready to transform digitally but lack the resources. For example, most MSME owners do not have powerful smartphones that can run digital solutions that are currently available in the market. Tokoko is built as a lightweight app (only 5MB) tailored towards mom-and-pop stores looking to expand their business and reach more customers online in this COVID hit economy.

“As Tokoko merchants start selling online and digitize themselves, we are excited to partner up with NextBillion.ai to provide our users the best maps and location experiences for enabling eCommerce in tier 2, 3, and 4 locations in Indonesia. Tokoko has seen massive traction in just 4 months of launch, with over 1 million merchants onboarded and millions of buyers visiting our merchant’s stores every month, enabling eCommerce for underserved micro-merchants”, says Chinmay Chauhan, Co-Founder & President of BukuWarung.

The Shopify-equivalent tool allows merchants to create online stores through the app. Tokoko helps traditional merchants to upload their catalogs on the digital store and start selling within minutes. Upon creating their shop, merchants can share it with their customers, manage their orders, receive payments, and track the delivery of goods, all using a simple and lightweight application.

Tokoko has gained popularity amongst MSMEs, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within just 3 months after launch, Tokoko was adopted by over 1 million merchants and has captured over 50% market share in commerce. Most merchants on Tokoko sell clothing and fashion accessories, food and beverage, and beauty and skincare products.

An important aspect of having an online shop and fulfilling orders is managing logistics. This can be a huge challenge in tier 2–3 cities as maps are not accurate and reliable. Tokoko’s eCommerce tools combined with NextBillion.ai mapping solutions can help merchants and buyers to fulfill their orders and boost commerce in these geographies. NextBillion.ai’s geocoding and map tiles can help merchants set their location and plan delivery logistics based on their distance from the buyer. It can also give Tokoko buyers clarity on the possible shipping charges based on their distance from the seller.

“Quite early on, NextBillion.ai developed an understanding of what’s important in the enterprise mapping industry landscape and worked consciously on finding the right product-market fit. We have designed our hyper-localized mapping products by focusing on these three pillars — Cost, Customization, and Control. MSMEs, particularly in tier 2 & 3 cities, can benefit from NextBillion.ai’s AI-powered custom map APIs as it takes into account local nuances, such as the local traffic, local road names, weather conditions, unstructured addresses, and unique driving behaviors,” asserted Ajay Bulusu, Co-Founder of NextBillion.ai.

NextBillion.ai is an enterprise-grade AI-powered mapping platform that empowers enterprises across industries to tackle highly complex mapping problems with the help of a decentralized and tailored map stack. The start-up offers custom-made solutions for every modern organization, use case, and geography.

Together with Tokoko, NextBillion.ai will assist MSMEs in solving logistical and last-mile delivery challenges with the help of easy-to-use and cost-effective routing and navigation solutions. The mapping platform will also help small merchants to embrace digital transformation by automating various touch-points of the supply chain during the order fulfillment process.