The Indonesian community website Femaledaily.com has quite an interesting story behind it. It first began in 2007 as Fashionesedaily.com by Hanifa Ambadar and Affi Assegaf. Connected by their common love for beauty and fashion, Hani invited Affi to blog as a contributor, as Affi tells us:
In late 2006, Hani, who was still living in the US, found my blog and we started exchanging emails. A few months later, she asked me to write the beauty section for her blog, which would later become fashionesedaily.com. Because I was working as a PR Manager for MAC Cosmetics back then and have always had a rather unhealthy obsession with beauty products, I said yes immediately!
The journey continued for both of them, although it remained pretty much on a part time basis. But traction grew and soon it became apparent that the site was worth full-time attention. In 2008, Hani returned to Indonesia to focus on the business. Affi followed suit after she resigned from her job at MAC. The move to Indonesia was a significant one as it marked the period when their venture became a full-time business. They went on to establish the following websites with the female Indonesian audience in mind:
- Fashionese Daily, a website focusing on style and beauty.
- Mommies Daily, which focuses on parenting and family content.
- Female Daily, a forum and content hub for its community to discuss on all things female.
To date, Female Daily has a total of 36,000 female users engaged in its content and forum discussions. Affi elaborates:
We want to keep building a range of platforms for women to find, share and discover relevant information and products, while at the same time creating positive impacts to their lives.
To sustain and expand the business, Female Daily needed some investment. It was late last year when the founders were in serious talks with several VCs. But the angel route felt more comfortable for the founders. And coincidentally an angel investor – who was also an active member of the Female Daily network since 2007 – took interest. That angel investor was Novita Imelda, who not only invested but also joined as a partner.
The partnership of these three lady entrepreneurs looks to be a successful one as Female Daily is already a profitable business, generating revenue mainly from advertising and also by consulting for female brands. Female Daily has an upcoming new e-commerce extension of its business as well. It’s a natural progression, as most women enjoy shopping or at least ‘window shopping’ through e-commerce sites. Without revealing too many details, Affi explained this a little further:
What we are building is something that we hope could fill a void in the e-commerce world that is just [in the] beginning stage in Indonesia. No one has occupied that space yet (at least not that we know of!) and we’re beyond excited to become the first – just like we were the first ever fashion & beauty blog in Indonesia back in 2007!
There are a number of sites that offer women-related products, but few are vertical e-commerce sites that fully dedicate themselves to Indonesia. As the founders are females themselves, this should (naturally) help them understand their market better. I look forward to Female Daily’s e-commerce site launch and I hope it matches Affi’s excitement for the project.