PriceArea

PriceArea operates as a price and product comparison engine, positioning itself as an intermediary between online shoppers and retailers within the Indonesian e-commerce market. The company was founded in December 2009 by Andry Suhaili, with a beta version released to the public in mid-July 2010, marking it as Indonesia's first price comparison website. Suhaili, who serves as the CEO, leveraged his background from running an advertising firm for seven years and his education in Computer Science and Computer Animation to launch the venture. His entrepreneurial journey began after returning to Indonesia from his studies in Los Angeles, initially starting a design and web development agency in 2004, which later evolved. The concept for PriceArea grew out of a previous venture, CekLagi.com, which was initially aimed at offline retailers but was transformed to better fit the market dynamics.

The platform aggregates millions of products from thousands of online stores, providing consumers with a centralized location to compare prices and product details. Its business model does not charge users for the service; instead, revenue is generated primarily through its advertising platform, which includes display ads, sponsored links, and white-label APIs. By 2014, the site hosted 15 million products from over 860,000 sellers and was receiving over 12 million annual visits. A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by South Korea-based Yello Mobile in May 2014 for an undisclosed sum reported to be in the seven-figure US dollar range. This acquisition was a strategic move for Yello Mobile to expand its presence into Southeast Asia, seeing potential in PriceArea's user base and business model. Following the acquisition, PriceArea announced plans to focus on mobile and regional expansion.

The service provides users with side-by-side product and price comparisons, detailed product information, merchant reviews, and price trend data to facilitate informed purchasing decisions. The core technology involves crawling and analyzing merchant websites to extract and update product titles, descriptions, and prices. The platform also incorporates user-generated content, such as ratings and reviews, to build a reliable and unbiased information source for shoppers. Keywords: price comparison engine, e-commerce aggregator, Indonesian market, online shopping, product search, retail technology, Andry Suhaili, Yello Mobile, online advertising, merchant reviews, price trends, e-commerce search, digital marketplace, online retail, product aggregation, Southeast Asia e-commerce, price analysis, consumer technology, digital advertising, online price comparison