This may sound like a platitude but it’s the best way Hendrik Tio can find to describe what drove him to build a business for more than 17 years.

“You have to love it. Don’t just think of it as a money machine. Because if you do, and if it doesn’t work, you will just stop there,” said Hendrik during an interview with The Jakarta Post last week.

And as all good success stories go, Hendrik happened to stumble into this online business.

Established in 1993, Bhinneka started as a supplier of printers and computers. But four years later, the financial crisis hit the country hard and forced his business along with many others into survival mode.

“We needed something we could do fast with a small budget. That was when the idea to set up an online business came up,” the 48-year old man said.

The company management had also sensed a promising outlook in the online sector, Hendrik added.

In the late 1990s, dot-com businesses had become the new stars in the global economy with many IT companies planning on going public.

Hoping the company could take part in this global trend, Bhinneka launched its online service with a startup capital of less than Rp 100 million (US$11,000).

“It was really a slow start. We only did this to survive. We were happy enough if there were 50 people visiting our website [a day].”

But when the business started gaining traction, another crisis unfurled dragging the company into another disaster in early 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst.

Bhinneka’s performance suffered, with many customers turning away from online shopping as a result of their growing distrust toward the Internet industry.

But Hendrik’s passion for the business helped him find a way to address this situation.

“After several discussions, we decided to open a street store to increase sales and restore customers’ trust [in our business].”

The opening of Bhinneka’s street store was a turning point, with business taking off after that.

The company has been posting an average turnover of Rp 60 billion a year with more than 50,000 visitors a day to the website.

But Bhinneka will not stop there, Hendrik went on, as he is constantly looking for innovative ways to improve his business, to ensure it grows from year to year, something he does with passion.

Born into a large family, Hendrik spent his childhood and adolescence in Medan, North Sumatra. While he didn’t have an IT background, the graduate of North Sumatra University who majored in accounting was always interested in computer and gadgets.

 “I felt somehow that these things were the future,” said Hendrik, who moved to Jakarta in the early 1990s to work for a Singaporean IT company after graduating.

Since then, his life has been intertwined with the world of IT and the Internet. He decided to establish Bhinneka when the owner of the company he worked for wished to return to Singapore.

“So my four shareholders and I discussed it and we decided to set up our own company. The good thing was this company was created by hardworking people who already knew the business,” he said, referring to his four friends who are also the founders of the company.

When asked about the future of the online business, Hendrik said he had high hopes the sector would turn into something big.

With online shopping becoming increasingly popular and with the prevalence of social networking sites, Hendrik predicts the industry will grow at 20 to 30 percent a year in the future. Hendrik feels more upbeat about his company, estimating it will grow at up to 40 percent a year.

“People don’t look things up in the yellow book anymore, they go straight to Uncle Google. The same thing happens when they want to go shopping, people now look at the Internet first,” Hendrik said of the reason why he felt so optimistic about online businesses.

In the longer run, Hendrik is also planning to list the company on the stock exchange.

“We will of course go public, as a company that belongs to its customers. But I can’t tell you when it will be exactly because it [the initial public offering] will require intensive preparation,” he said, admitting that floating Bhinneka on the stock market was one of his dreams.

With the robust growth in online shopping nowadays, Hendrik’s dream may soon become reality.

So what’s next after that? The father of one says he doesn’t have any big plans yet.

“I just want to retire happily with my family, move to Bali and spend my old days on the island.”

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