Koprol – Indonesia’s Location Aware Social Network.

• Tweet

• Tweet

Koprol is a fast growing location aware social network from Indonesia. The first from a South East Asian country, Koprol acts more like a local socio-civic guide telling people about nearby coffee shops, parties and events going on in Jakarta. Apart from giving the regular bite of social web too.

Founded by three techies – Fajar Budiprasetyo, Daniel Armanto and Satya Witoelar, Koprol has built a strong presence among the youth of Indonesia, connecting the social graph using both mobile phones & web. Interestingly there is support for ordinary mobile phones with simple GPRS connection as well, which helps them to cash on a larger market of mobile users.

Similar to situation in India, Koprol too has had to battle with issues like zero government funding and low broadband penetration amongst others which are nearly as common as it is for an Indian startup. Though, there are plenty of location based social networks such as FourSqaure (TechCrunch’s favorite), BrightKite (Europe), Bedo (China, Translated to English) internationally, Koprol’s strategy to scale itself within Indonesia seems to have taken off well.

At this stage, they have not opened API for open application development, which according to us might stunt their growth in the mid-term. Also there is a constant risk from international networks with deep pockets expanding into Asia. My take is that a thoughtful approach to scale the application into a strong-engagement platform and probably even expand into rest of Asia would do Koprol good. Besides, there is home grown giant Indonesian community of Kaskus to compete with too.

And dear Pluggd.in readers, here we begin covering bit-by-bit about the worthy tech startups (products) from the Asian region. Hope you enjoy knowing & spinning the startups from in & around our home.

And before the end, I can’t help myself without requesting the Indian mobile operators for a little bit of openness It’s time to wake up and share the cellids asap. Let techies & entrepreneurs build a location aware system for India too.

Share your views #Pi readers.