Started at Bali Coding School, 'Southeast Asia Danggeun Market'... Users Increased 4.5 Times in One Month

Used Goods Trading Platform 'Chaka Market' Gains Popularity in Bali... Originated from Local Coding School
Launched in June This Year, Secured 52,000 Members... 4.5 Times Growth in One Month
Introduced Installment Model for Used Goods Trading... Swiss Accelerator 'F10' Also Takes Notice
Accelerated Growth Through SBA Collaboration... Started Local Pilot with Hana Bank

Local students of the coding school operated by Korean IT startup Cake Labs in Bali, Indonesia.
[Photo by Cake Labs]

[Asia Economy Reporter Junhyung Lee] Bali, Indonesia, known as a world-class resort destination, is also famous as a "digital nomad sanctuary." Its beautiful scenery and low cost of living have attracted freelancers and startup employees from the U.S. and other countries one by one. It can be considered the origin of the increasingly popular workation (remote work from vacation spots) trend in domestic startups.

Cake Labs is a Korean IT startup that originated in Bali. The company launched the secondhand trading platform "Chaka Market" in June. Chaka Market is an "Indonesian version of Danggeun Market," a hyper-local platform connecting local communities and neighborhood businesses. By last month, it had secured over 50,000 members in Bali alone. Starting this month, it is expanding its service area based on three regions within Indonesia. The Swiss fintech (finance + technology) specialized accelerator "F10" recognized Chaka Market's potential in August and made a seed investment of approximately 300 million KRW.

Started from a Bali Coding School

The beginning was a coding school. Oh Juhyun, CEO of Cake Labs, who worked as a developer in Korea, moved to Bali in 2018 after marrying his wife, a Bali native. Bali was literally a "new continent." Developers from global IT companies like Google and Facebook were running small coding schools everywhere. However, these coding schools run by developers from developed countries were, in a sense, "their own league." The actual lives of locals were very different from Bali’s image as a "digital nomad sanctuary." In response, Oh opened an AI coding school for locals in 2018. To support students worried about their livelihood, he used his own funds to pay tuition. The model was to pay a salary after learning coding for a certain period. Oh said, "We occasionally developed and launched applications together with the students who received education," adding, "We also held developer workshops regularly and incorporated as a corporation in March 2019."

Cake Labs’ first service was the mobile household account book service "Chaka Pin," launched early last year. It is a service where AI recommends efficient money management. It was inspired by the fact that many people in developing countries lack financial infrastructure and cannot properly manage personal funds such as loans. However, the service operated for only six months. Oh explained, "The failure was due to applying domestic fintech know-how like Toss to Indonesia, where the financial environment is different," and added, "It seems we created a service we wanted rather than one immediately needed locally."

Oh Juhyun, CEO of Cake Labs.
Photo by Lee Junhyung

Focusing on Local Pain Points

The next challenge focused on the pain points of locals. Oh first listened to the difficulties of coding school students. At that time, students struggled to afford personal laptops. Even used laptops cost between 600,000 and 800,000 KRW, making it difficult to buy with an average monthly salary of 300,000 to 400,000 KRW for young workers. Oh devised a plan to introduce installment payments for peer-to-peer secondhand transactions. However, the low credit card penetration rate of only 2-3% was an obstacle. Oh said, "I thought that if all of people’s activities were stored, tracked, and datafied, it could replace credit scores."

After this consideration, Chaka Market was born. Oh judged that an easily accessible online platform where transaction data could be continuously accumulated was a secondhand trading platform like Danggeun Market. To increase accessibility, the transaction process was simplified so that products could be registered and sold in just three minutes. Like Danggeun Market, users can participate in transactions after neighborhood verification through smartphone GPS. To activate various transactions beyond secondhand trading, local small business owners such as laundries and bakeries were also encouraged to join.

Cake Labs launched the secondhand trading platform 'Chaka Market' in June this year.
[Photo by Cake Labs]

The overseas proof of concept (PoC) support project by Seoul Startup Hub under the Seoul Business Agency (SBA) became a stepping stone for service advancement. In August this year, Cake Labs signed a business agreement with Seoul Startup Hub and was introduced to Hana Bank to start a PoC for an installment transaction model exclusive to Chaka Market. Oh explained that it was not easy to find a bank to conduct PoC together due to the nature of a newly established startup. The company plans to fully launch the installment transaction service for Chaka Market in collaboration with Hana Bank in March next year. Oh said, "The PoC conducted with Seoul Startup Hub was the reason F10 took notice of our company."

The number of users also increased significantly. Chaka Market’s membership grew from 9,000 in September, when the installment transaction PoC began, to 40,000 in just one month. Currently, the membership stands at about 52,000. Considering the service was only piloted in Bali, this is a considerable achievement. Chaka Market plans to secure additional seed investment this month through a fund established by Hana Bank.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.