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ashion marketplace start-up LYKE aims to strengthen its presence as a mobile shopping application in the country by connecting fashion vendors and buyers through smartphones.

Set up in December 2015 as an online fashion marketplace, the start-up has decided to focus on helping fashionistas find their preferred garments through a mobile application.

LYKE Indonesia CEO and founder Bastian Purrer said the relatively new service did not aim to compete with other fashion marketplaces in the country but rather collaborate with them.

Purrer said LYKE did not have its own inventory of products, and never would, but acted as the messenger between online fashion shops and customers. The app would only collaborate with marketplaces that have already established their quality and their products clearly.

He said LYKE was not a proper e-commerce platform, serving rather as the middleman between customers and other online marketplaces.

LYKE'€™s partners include online platforms Berrybenka, Bobobobo and Saqina. The startu-up also encourages partnerships with local brands that sell their products through photo-sharing network Instagram, because of the high volume of people purchasing through the site.

'€œWhat makes us different is that we are not competing with these platforms, but we are helping them showcase their products. The difference between LYKE and the others is that we operate purely from mobile phones while they get their revenue mostly from their websites,'€ he said on Tuesday.

Currently, LYKE features up to 100,000 products from around 50 local online collaborators. Purrer said LYKE would only become a mobile app service, as it aimed to address all the problems known to come up when purchasing products through mobile apps in Indonesia.

The app is available in both Google's Play Store and Apple's iOS App Store.

'€œMost large fashion start-ups only focus on the look and feel of their websites, while most young customers usually browse via their mobile phones. This reinforces the fact that mobile apps have greater potential to grow,'€ he added.

In addition, LYKE aims to provide easier product recommendations and give customers regular product updates to keep them using the app.

LYKE will also aim to streamline the mobile payment process through collaboration with major banks, such as Bank Mandiri, BCA, BRI and BNI.