Today Indonesian logistics service Kirim.co.id held a soft launch to introduce its broad range of delivery services to help individuals and businesses, particularly in the Jakarta and its surrounding areas. Kirim (which means “send”) also launched its 24/7 beta delivery service today, and will test it out for the next three months. If the team deems it successful, then they will continue it 24/7 for the long-run.
Kirim has two main functions that triggered my interest - 24/7 courier services and a public API for e-commerce players. The company has 25 couriers at its disposal to pick up your items and deliver them around Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi areas. There are five delivery services for you to choose from - the quickest one is “Kirim Langsung” (which means “send immediately”) where the items will be delivered 24/7 in the space of four hours. It reasonably charges users IDR 40,000 ($4.20) for each five kilograms of items delivered.
Kirim has another unique service called ‘Personal Assistant.’ With this service, Kirim’s couriers will be able to help you do simple tasks such as buying groceries, products, or queuing for a midnight sale. You can pay for Kirim’s services either before or after the delivery via cash, debit, or credit card. Kirim can also pay for the products first for you, but it’ll cost you an extra five percent of the product’s price if the item is more expensive than IDR 300,000 ($31.20).
Intan Ryandhita Novia Saraswati, the CEO of Kirim, told us about several unique tasks that they have done recently. One of them is to buy a specific chocolate and deliver it at a certain time to a girl in Jakarta; the buyer was a person living in Malaysia. There was this another story where Kirim was asked to do a simple visa process after receiving the documentation, and send the visas immediately to the Philippines so that several foreign doctors could attend a conference in the country.
All the couriers’ vehicles are equipped with GPS, so users can also track packages in real-time if you’re curious about the couriers’ whereabouts.
Kirim to Change the Indonesian E-Commerce Scene?
Kirim is also developing its API to be used by e-commerce sites in Indonesia. The API allows online sellers to put Indonesian logistics’ price lists and order tracking features on their sites, allowing users to compare, choose, and track the delivery services more easily, rather than having to go through several logistics’ sites to check them.
The feature I found most interesting is Kirim’s automatic data print and pick-up service. At the moment, to send items, online sellers must go through the hassle of manually writing down the customer’s data and drop the items at the nearest logistics venue. But by using Kirim’s API, sellers would no longer need to do both of those monotonous things, as the customer information stored online would be automatically processed by Kirim and its logistics partners. Then Kirim’s team would come to the sellers’ place to pick up the items.
The best thing about the API service is its rate, which incurs exactly the same rate as if you are sending the items yourself in the normal way. And this applies even if you choose other logistic services such as JNE or DHL through Kirim. Unfortunately, this feature is still only available in the four afore-mentioned Indonesian cities now. But Intan said that if there’s a good response in terms of demand from other cities, the startup is open to expand its courier network there.
The API beta is currently used by eight merchants so far. The team is going to fully launch it during Kirim’s grand launch event next week. Online merchants can get access to the API by contacting Kirim via email.
Overall I think Kirim’s services are pretty exciting. Both the CEO and COO have had more than a decade of working experience at local and international logistics companies, so they both should know what they’re doing with Kirim.
PS. We wish Intan the happiest of birthdays as today, coincidentally, is the CEO’s birthday!
