Last week I attended an event at the National University of Singapore campus. Never having been there before, and not having a car, I consulted an online map to find the best public transportation to take. I normally use Google Maps because I have the app installed on my Blackberry, but on that day I decided to try another service instead: Gothere.sg. Gothere.sg is a local startup focusing on online maps for Singapore. I had heard of them before but never used them much. My experience on that day told me that I underestimated the value of their service.
First, compare the result of the two queries below (click image to get a better view). Notice that they are different and that Gothere.sg suggests a shorter route (Note: the two services estimates travel time differently so the numbers do not compare). Gothere.sg suggests the A1 bus for the last leg of travel. What’s not obvious is that the A1 bus is not a true public bus, but rather a NUS campus bus. What’s also not apparent is that the A1 bus only operates at certain hours. If the query had been made, say, an hour before, Gothere.sg would give a result exactly the same as Google Maps’.

My point here is that being Singapore-based business, Gothere.sg has a closer relationship with local companies, including NUS. Thus, they are able to have better information about the location they are serving and the quality of their offering proves it. This is in fact the market positioning of Gothere.sg. When Google first came to Singapore in late 2009, Gothere.sg wrote the following in their
blog post:
You can probably say that Google is like your favourite coffee chain where you know you can definitely get a cafe latte in any of its stores, whether you’re in sunny San Francisco or bustling Beijing. But nothing beats that cup of kopi-o siu dai from the nearby kopitiam uncle who knows you best.
I wish I could end this post with a positive note for the small guys, but the truth is, as a business, there is a lot of challenge for Gothere.sg. Google is now local in Singapore, so they are as close to the ground as Gothere.sg. Google also has a lot more resource and a more complete family of products that can help keep users in the Google.com domain. I don’t see a lot of options moving forward for Gothere.sg except to license their technology.
Gothere.sg may not be the best example of David killing Goliath, but let me go back to my original point. By being on the ground, local startups do have advantages over global internet competitors. Knowing the local matchmaking culture is what powers
Zhenai.com to compete strongly against Match.com in China. Mint.com may have the US market locked up, but local startup
NgaturDuit.com can make partnerships with Indonesian financial services much faster. The same principle can be applied by location-based social network service
Koprol which is decidedly focusing on Indonesia and is now facing competition from Foursquare. The internet makes the world a much smaller place, but focusing on the local market can be a viable strategy and a profitable one.
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