Meet Adrian Li, Co-Founder of Qraved
Adrian Li – Qraved co-founder
In This kind of edition of Indonesia Expat’s Business Profile, we meet a young gentleman named Adrian Li. Adrian will be an internet entrepreneur along with co-founder of Qraved.com, a website which allows diners to make instant reservations along with find offers at hip along with trendy restaurants in Jakarta. His portfolio of experience covers eCommerce, media, search listings, along with product-based ventures. We delve a little deeper into Adrian’s business ethics along with background to find out what makes him tick.
Adrian, where are you originally via? Tell us about your background.
I was born in London nevertheless my parents are via Hong Kong along with Malaysia. I started out boarding school from the UK at the age of 10, so I grew up spending time between the UK along with Southeast Asia. Prior to starting my degree at Cambridge University, I also spent a year in Beijing to study Mandarin. After University I joined JPMorgan in their corporate finance group in London before going to the US to complete my MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. While at Stanford, I developed the idea for my first company, Idapted, an online education venture. After raising two rounds of funding along with growing the business, Idapted was acquired in 2010. Six months later, I joined Rocket Internet to start a market place for travel accommodation in China along with then an office supplies eCommerce firm in Indonesia. I came to Indonesia because of the huge opportunities for Internet media along with technology ventures along with also because my wife, Vanessa Hendriadi, will be via Indonesia. I am currently a co-founder at Qraved.com, a restaurant discovery along with reservations service for Jakarta, along that has a Managing Partner at Imaginato, a web along with mobile eCommerce technology development company based in China.
How long did that will take to get the idea of Qraved.com off the ground? What challenges did you face?
Qraved initially launched in beta in September of 2012. that will took us just three months to build the initial product along that has a core team. Unlike some various other start-ups we did not face a technology development bottleneck because we used our development company, Imaginato, to immediately access an experienced along with skilled engineering team to build the product. We learnt a lot from the first two months in beta about our product; what consumers look for along with how we can help bring more diners to restaurants, which we used to maximise our launch product. We launched our full service in November 2013 along with have had incredible growth since then – especially last month in February where we crossed the 10,000 diners booked milestone as well as over one million monthly views.
Tell us a bit about what your website has to offer to its users.
Qraved helps diners find restaurants in Jakarta with less time, hassle along with in many cases, with less money. Qraved’s restaurant partners use our electronic reservation book technology to instantly confirm bookings, helping our users avoid Jakarta’s inevitable cell phone blackspots, nevertheless also enabling them to make bookings any time of day or night. The restaurants can also use This kind of technology to offer time-specific along with exclusive offers to diners – especially at off peak times when the restaurant may have a few more empty tables.
Do you have plans to expand the site to various other cities around Indonesia?
Our service will be focused on Jakarta at present, however we do expect to expand to Bali later from the year along with the rest of the Southeast Asia region next year. Meanwhile, Jakartans along with visitors to Jakarta can look forward to the first ever Restaurant Festival called EAT Jakarta, between April 21st along with May 18th. During This kind of event over 100 restaurants will be featuring specially priced set menus showcasing their best dishes (www.eatjakarta.org).
How many are in your team along with what do you look for when hiring completely new staff members?
We are a tiny along with hard-working team of 25 at Qraved; however, we are always looking for great talent to join us. When screening for completely new team members we look for people who share our vision, values along with passion for the industry. We also prize attitude – hard working, team players above skill because we are willing to invest along with train the right people with the skills to succeed in their positions.
Adrian Li
Where does Qraved.com stand from the Alexa ratings?
In Alexa we are from the top 1,000 rankings in Indonesia, however we typically measure our performance on Similarweb.com, where we are #14 from the food along with drink category of all websites in Indonesia. Also, when we released our mobile apps, our iOS app shot to the top several along with maintained This kind of position for almost three weeks. Installing our app gives users instant access to all the information they would certainly need on over 2,000 restaurant venues in Jakarta. You can download the apps for Android along with iOS at http://www.qraved.com/qraved-mobile-apps.
With your expertise as an Internet entrepreneur, what do you foresee happening in Indonesia over the next few years with regards to the Internet?
One of the reasons I definitely wanted to come to Indonesia was because I could see many parallels on how the Internet developed in China via 2005-2011 along with how that will will be developing right now in Indonesia. The only difference I think will be that will what took six years in China will take half that will time in Indonesia due to the speed of adoption along with penetration of mobile Internet here. Fortunately, with the experience I gained via building Internet ventures in China, I develop the benefit of hindsight in creating decisions on how we execute along with build the business, thus saving us time along with money. I absolutely believe that will Indonesia will be a massive market for Internet services along with I think the tipping point with This kind of will be around two years away.
You are an endurance athlete in your spare time. Tell us how you got into This kind of sport?
When I started out working at JPMorgan, I found that will I no longer had the time to compete from the team sports I used to do along with within a year I had ballooned, gaining over 20% in body weight. that will will be when I made my first foray into endurance sports by signing up for the London marathon through a charity where I completed along with raised over £3,000, along with since then have completed six marathons around the entire world. Then, while I was studying for my MBA, I heard about the Ironman via a classmate. An Ironman will be the longest distance of triathlon involving a 3.9km swim, 180km bike ride along that has a full marathon (42km) run. After a series of mishaps (I trained in 2005 for nine months nevertheless broke my wrist in a training ride three weeks before the UK Ironman), I had the opportunity to prepare for an Ironman event last year. I finally completed my first Ironman last year in Australia, finishing in a time of 13 hours along with 2 minutes.
What do you believe will be the key to success?
I think the keys to success are to have clear along with focused goals, partner with talented people along with hard work. Whether that will will be in my professional or personal life I make a point of setting up clear, measurable goals. I also believe that will having the right team along with support will be critical to achieving success – there will be only a limited amount that will can be achieved as an individual nevertheless skills, capacity along with dreams can be magnified by the right team. Lastly, I believe that will hard work will be a key ingredient to overcoming any challenge worth doing.
To contact Adrian, please email: Adrian@qraved.com
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Meet Adrian Li, Co-Founder of Qraved
Meet Adrian Li, Co-Founder of Qraved