LokaLocal Helps You Make Friends Across the Globe

Chin Yoon Khen, Founder of LokaLocal.com, helps travellers to discover local experience, life and culture by making local friends everywhere.Chin Yoon Khen, member of Travel Massive Kuala Lumpur, founded CANUX in 2011 and embarked on a journey as a documentary photographer and website developer, discovered a passion for travel then wrote the book “Traditional Trades of Penang.”

LokaLocal.com is an online marketplace for day trips made by locals. This service connects travellers, who are looking for authentically local experiences, life and culture in Malaysia, and local experts, who listed and will lead their own trips.

What gap did you find in the travel industry that inspired you to create this startup?

People can visit places, join outdoor activities and adventures at the destination on their own. However in the developing country where people don’t speak their language, and locals don’t really speak English well — it’s quite hard for people to get the real local touch on their own.

To date, there still isn’t a marketplace that’s able to penetrate into the local and community driven tours in our country, which can be problematic when travelling without a local expert with an authentic, local experience. We see the need here to create an easy way to get the real authenticity of the place they are visiting or become a local guide. This is definitely a new, rising trend now.

What makes your startup different from other similar startups out there?

Our startup is not as disruptive as we appear. Rather, we have found more effective ways to extract value and bring social impact in the travel scene today:

• We offer travellers to take the “local way” of experiencing place

• We align to Malaysia’s efforts to elevate our tourism industry to put the country on world map as the people’s preferred travel destination
• We support the “Go Domestic” campaign and back the country by accelerating their efforts in local, rural and eco-tourism
• We help cities preserve their local cultures by instilling local touch through discovering the undiscovered and creating job opportunities 
• We supports local trades and businesses by putting more directly in the hands of local communities, thus promoting the survival of their legacy

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

I pitched to an investor who supported me in the development. In the first month, all we did was replicate takemetour.com, a Thailand based company with similar values. In the second month, we started to add more quality tours, and started building transactions and focusing on the stability of the product. By the third month, Lokalocal.com has more than 50 tours in 6 states across Malaysia. And the story continues…

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

Culture and legacy need to be passed on for sustainability. We empower local community to express themselves through locally hosted tours. Through curation and crowdsourcing, we promote cross-cultural understanding and connect local collaborators to forge bonds with travellers, which eventually help local communities to reach out to the world.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

• The success of your startup rides on your team, find someone with a similar mission, who excels at execution, and who’s from a diverse successful startup background with extensive networks, which serve as a significant competitive advantage
• Execute fast, fix mistakes quick – how fast you fail is how fast you execute, embrace failure
• Get the right mentor and build your community

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with Chin Yoon Khen and Lokalocal on Travel Massive and Facebook.