<article>Malaysia-based technology startup RecomN, which runs <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.recomn.com" target="_blank">RecomN.com</a> in Malaysia and <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.Sejasa.com" target="_blank">Sejasa.com</a> in Indonesia, has today announced raising $1 million in seed funding from <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/gobi-partners" target="_blank">Gobi Partners</a>.</article>

Malaysia-based technology startup RecomN, which runs <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.recomn.com" target="_blank">RecomN.com</a> in Malaysia and <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.Sejasa.com" target="_blank">Sejasa.com</a> in Indonesia, has today announced raising $1 million in seed funding from <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/gobi-partners" target="_blank">Gobi Partners</a>.
RecomN.com and Sejasa are both marketplaces for professionals, from renovation contractors to event photographers to makeup artists, to list their services and get reviewed by past clients.
Co-founded by Jes Min Lua, Alex Tan, and Anthony Eka Wijaya in July 2014, the company claims to have more than 5,000 service professionals across Malaysia and Indonesia on its platform. In a release, it noted that as of March 2016, RecomN facilitates nearly 15,000 requests every month, with more than 500,000 monthly visitors to its site. It also claims to process more than $250,000 in services every day.
The company will use the funds to improve its existing operations in Malaysia and Indonesia, and head into new markets. &#8220;We&#8217;re actually making our preparations to enter new markets already, but we&#8217;re actually not at liberty to announce that yet,&#8221; said Lua in a phone call with DEALSTREETASIA. However, the new markets are confirmed to be Southeast Asian cities.
<figure id="attachment_34859" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34859" style="width: 550px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screenshot-2016-03-21-at-3.56.45-PM.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-34859"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-34859 size-full" src="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screenshot-2016-03-21-at-3.56.45-PM.jpg" alt="RecomN.com" width="550" height="269" srcset="https://media.dealstreetasia.com/uploads/2016/03/Screenshot-2016-03-21-at-3.56.45-PM.jpg?w=550 550w, https://media.dealstreetasia.com/uploads/2016/03/Screenshot-2016-03-21-at-3.56.45-PM.jpg?resize=768,375 768w" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-34859" class="wp-caption-text">RecomN.com</figcaption></figure>
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Like any marketplace, customers can request for various services via RecomN.com or Sejasa.com&#8217;s website and mobile apps. Then, service professionals who are interested in the jobs will reply the users with cost estimates, portfolio of their work and reviews from previous customers, according to a release.
Currently, service professionals can list themselves on the website for free. The company, which was bootstrapped to this point, generates revenue via two ways: firstly, professionals can pay for lead generation, where the site sends over requests from consumers for a fee; and secondly, they can pay a subscription where RecomN would help them build up their brand online.
<h4>The rating business</h4>
As RecomN enters new markets, it will have to educate consumers and professionals on the value of getting on a marketplace to list and request for services. Additionally, it will have to watch out for competitors &#8212; incumbents and newbies alike.
&#8220;I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re aware &#8211; ServisHero, Kaodim as well as a whole bunch of local players &#8211; would always want to go in using the discounting method. We don&#8217;t particularly believe in discounts, because we believe that in order to get quality service, people need to be prepared to pay a decent price. So we don&#8217;t believe in the sustainability of discounting, but we believe in &#8230; attracting good customers who are willing to pay for good services,&#8221; Lua opined.
She continued, &#8220;We do that in a few ways. First, it&#8217;s to ensure that quality is the first thing, whenever we bring a service professional on board, quality is the most important. Not only do we collect the paperwork of the service professionals, we also have a programme where we call up three of their previous customers and verify that these professionals are good. We literally do a background reference check&#8230; by asking them all sorts of questions around timing, pricing, how they interact with the customer &#8211; that sort of thing.&#8221;
Ones that pass the test will get a verified badge, but they won&#8217;t be able to rest on their laurels forever. Once the verified service professionals reach a point where they get a rating lower than 4, they would lose their verified status.
Lua added that the average rating for a service professional on RecomN.com is 4.8 out of 5 stars, and 4.5 out of 5 stars for those on Sejasa.com.
“If you look across Southeast Asia, the potential for growth in the service industry is huge. Indonesia has four million SMEs and Sejasa.com has been acquiring hundreds of service professionals each week – all while still bootstrapped. This investment will help us maintain our leading position in Indonesia, and work to better solve service problems that people face every day,” said Wijaya.
Just yesterday, ServisHero, a competitor of RecomN which was mentioned in our interview with Lua, <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/local-services-platform-servishero-raises-2-7m-golden-gate-ventures-cradle-34759/" target="_blank">raised</a> a $2.7 million Series A round led by Golden Gate Ventures. Based in Malaysia, ServisHero is currently available in its home country and in Singapore, and is looking to expand into Thailand.
This is also Gobi Ventures&#8217; second announcement this week, the first being its <a style="color: #000080;" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/34586-34586/" target="_blank">investment in Malaysian youth event sponsorship platform</a> YouthsToday.
Also read:
<a style="color: #ff0000;" title="Best time for Malaysian startups to attract top talent amid lay-offs: Cradle Fund CEO Nazrin Hassan" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/28493-28493/" rel="bookmark">Best time for Malaysian startups to attract top talent amid lay-offs: Cradle Fund CEO Nazrin Hassan</a>
<a style="color: #ff0000;" title="Cradle Fund taps six investment partners to raise $12.4m for Malaysian startups" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/cradle-fund-taps-six-investment-partners-raise-12-4m-malaysian-startups-32657/" rel="bookmark">Cradle Fund taps six investment partners to raise $12.4m for Malaysian startups</a>

RecomN.com and Sejasa are both marketplaces for professionals, from renovation contractors to event photographers to makeup artists, to list their services.

Malaysia: RecomN raises $1m in seed funding from Gobi Partners

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Malaysia: RecomN raises $1m in seed funding from Gobi Partners

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