Fave Group aims to continually adapt the mobile-first strategy in Indonesia in response to the 62.7 million mobile internet users in the country, coupled with the 34 percent internet penetration.

Fave Group CEO and founder Joel Neoh said the company would focus its growth plans for 2017 on the rising consumer strength in cities outside Jakarta, which has been picking up over the years, even on Groupon.

With these figures, Joel explained that Fave Indonesia aimed to achieve a growth rate of 2 to 5 percent per year, on the strength of rising transaction numbers from major Indonesian regions outside of Jakarta, notably Bali; Bandung, West Java; and Surabaya, East Java.

The focus on these three places for 2017, he added, was a result of the large potential in terms of transaction values. This is despite 70 to 80 percent of the Indonesian market centering mainly on businesses in the Greater Jakarta area.

“What we want to do is to ultimately educate the many small businesses in Indonesia, many of which have attached themselves to Groupon, toward the merits of digital business. We do this by increasingly growing our team in Indonesia as well as pushing the mobile-first strategy in this mobile-strong market,” he said on Monday.

Fave Group acquired Groupon Indonesia in 2016, which also included the acquisition of Groupon Malaysia and Groupon Singapore. Since then, Indonesia has become the app’s most promising market, despite having fewer registered consumers than in its other markets.

Fave Group has 3 million registered users in Malaysia, but only resulting in an annual transaction rate of US$1 million. Indonesia, however, has only 1.5 million registered consumers but an annual transaction rate of $1.3 million.

Currently up to 2,000 Indonesian businesses have signed up for Fave Indonesia, and the company aims to increase that number to between 8,000 and 10,000 vendors in the next few years.

Around 50 percent of the 2,000 vendors operate in the food and beverage industry, which is described as the most popular sector in Indonesia. Another 30 percent is made up of beauty product vendors.

As a way to move forward, Fave Group’s general manager Yew Wai Kong said that the new Fave Indonesia would move away from the need to print coupons, as Groupon users had previously to do.

“This is also driven by the growth of mobile payment in Indonesia. Predictions say that mobile payment in Indonesia will grow by 20 times in the next 10 years. Fave will be able to take advantage of this fact by giving local businesses an effective digital platform through mobile,” Yew said.

Groupon Indonesia’s previous users are able to link their accounts to the Fave mobile app and continue redeeming their vouchers or existing transactions.

However, Groupon’s global performance in 2016 saw declines in profitability as it declined by 7 percent in its global markets outside of North America.

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