Founder’s Diary Episode 6 – Seekmi Highlight: How Seekmi Sees Competition

SIAR.Com, Jakarta — You are reading a part of Founder’s Diary Sixth Episode Documentation. In this documentation, we are highlighting Seekmi, one of our speakers in this episode especially regarding the latest news on the big news that GoLife will stop their operation in July 2020. We asked Clarissa Leung, Co-Founder and CEO of Seekmi in what her view is on the news, whether it is a good thing because less competitor in the market or bad sentiment to the industry.

In case you missed it, in our sixth episode, we were joined by Clarissa Leung, Co-Founder and CEO of Seekmi. Clarissa is a Canadian Electrical & Computer Engineer. After her MBA at Queen’s University in Ontario and after two successful tech start-ups in Canada, Clarissa ventured to Indonesia in 2014. Clarissa founded the company after facing a major dilemma in 2014: “Who do I call when my AC breaks?” and within one year after that question, she founded and built Seekmi.

Seekmi is now considered as the leading on-demand platform in Indonesia, specializing in on-demand home and office services, delivered straight to the customer’s doorsteps. With over 20,000+ Seekmi certified technicians that are required to pass the Seekmi Academy training and certification program, made in collaboration with national and international technical associations, Seekmi centers itself on quality, striving to ensure that each and every order is completed to the highest standards.

What is your view on the big news?

Although I truly respect GoLife and GoJek, and always wished them the best, it is good news for Seekmi. GoLife has always been our biggest competitor, a true giant that made us work extra hard for every single customer and every single vendor that we have on our platform. Their enormous size and scale motivated us to work smarter, harder, and be more innovative.

This news translates to a huge opportunity for Seekmi, especially now that one of the giants have decided to focus on their many other product and service lines first. As they are closing down the business unit, we are very excited for the newly available resources, support, clients, and vendors, giving us a major boost to our business. Seekmi has always focused on revolutionizing the service industry and we are more than happy to embrace this change in dynamics.

How does Seekmi maintain the quality of all man powers to deliver the best result for customers?

We run a very stringent testing and comprehensive trainings to make sure they are being able to deliver our value proposition in giving a high standard quality of services. We do online testing, offline testing and trainings.

We maintain our quality by leveraging technology. With technology, we get feedback really quickly to see who the high performers are and reward them fairly based on their performance. So far, all our manpower all highly qualified for the work. We also have a strong operation team to monitor the quality of the manpower and all of these efforts have made us known for the best quality compared to the other platform according to our clients.

What makes Seekmi better than the others as we believe other providers do trainings as well?

We are so busy making sure our customers are happy, ensuring that they receive the highest quality service each and every time, that we don’t spend too much of our time focusing on our competitors. We prioritize customer satisfaction and are constantly trying to better understand our customers’ pain point. We strongly focus on our technology. Our team is very lean but we are capable of managing a large number of manpower. Our goal has always been on build scalability with high quality of manpower by having a strong operational process and even stronger technology.

Do you have any special advice for the fellow Female Founders or founders in general?

When I started, I tried to not to think too much about that (being  a female founder). After running Seekmi for many years, I realize there could be differences and challenges. For example, there may be differences internally when you lead a team, as people may look at you and judge you based on your gender, nationality, background, age, experience, and so on. That is where your level of self-awareness must be at its highest and you have to adapt quickly according to the situation. That is something that female founders have to be aware about. You may need to adapt your leadership style accordingly to get the best results, and you may be happier that you did.

There are advantages and disadvantages in being a female founder, and it’s good if you can identify those early on. It’s not much different than being aware of your strengths and weaknesses. For those areas where you are not getting optimal results, you may consider finding a team member that can complement you.

In general, challenges in building a start-up will always be there, not only for female founders. Actually, being a female founder can be an asset in some cases. Therefore, I would encourage every aspirational female founder to go out and give it a try, be persistent, and give it your very best. Have a strong vision and mission, and lead your team to make that vision and mission come true.

What are your key takeaways in being a founder?

One key takeaway in being a founder is to be extremely persistent. I think the level of persistence that you need is beyond what anybody that has not done their own business can ever imagine. One day your business may be doing very well, and then suddenly anything can happen. Despite your best predictions and preparations, things that can hurt your business range from pandemics, financial crises, new fierce competition, unexpected internal events, client financial problems, many things that are beyond your control. When these things happen, you can’t give up, you must be solve each problem with care with a high level of persistence.

Another key takeaway is the need to constantly evolve as a leader. For example, if you were to change your focus from B2C to B2B, you must learn many new skills, because in order to lead your team, you must have a certain level of knowledge and conviction about the sector in order to be able to lead your team. Not only that, the environment changes constantly as well, so you need to continuously be able to know what is happening and know how to adapt to the new circumstances. Those are my key takeaways. (Natashia)

As mentioned earlier, if you want to visit our other segments, please visit: Founder’s Diary Episode 6 – Covid-19, The Catalyst of Smart-City Visions and Founder’s Diary Episode 6 – Startup Perspective: B2C vs B2B vs B2G also Founder’s Diary Episode 6 – Qlue Highlight: From Jakarta Smart City to the Next Level

Foto : TheJakartaPost