Housing used to be relatively hard to come by in many big cities. Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, they are becoming even more accessible today.

Boarding houses were traditionally run by their owner. Today, however, boarding house management companies have sprung up in many big cities to take over the work of the owners and run their boarding houses for them instead.

 

 

 

 

 

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In addition, there are now digital platforms that act as a bridge between boarding home owners and their customers. One of them is Mamikos, established in 2015 by CEO Maria Regina Anggit, COO/CMO Bayu Syerli Rahmad and CTO Gilbok Lee.

Mamikos allows its users to find places to stay for a short time or long term. About 150 thousand boarding house owners are on Mamikos, as well as 6-8 million people who look for places to stay each month. Its service is now available in 300 cities in Indonesia.

"We started out as a tool to help people find boarding homes, but now we're also getting into the administration of boarding homes, too," Anggit said.

How Mamikos started 

Anggit said that the idea for Mamikos came from watching his friends in Yogyakarta struggle to find a place to stay. 

"I saw how hard it was for my friends to find a place to stay in Jogja. Even though there is a lot of information on the internet, there wasn't a site to give accurate and up-to-date information. From there, we thought about making a platform that is serious about handling this information. From there, we considered developing a platform that is serious about handling this information," he explained.

She believes that technology has the potential to make things easier for people who want to find a place to stay, which spurred her decision to found Mamikos in November 2015. 

"The name Mamikos is derived from the Greek word 'Mami', which means Mother, and 'Kos', meaning boarding. ... We want to provide a platform where people can come together and work on innovative technology to help the field develop in Indonesia," Anggit said.

Continuing innovations

Today, owing to the platform's features and innovations, a Mamikos partner can automatically charge for boarding and chat with home-seekers in the app. 

Mamikos also has the Virtual Tour feature, which lets people see the boarding area from any angle and depth. This feature allows people who want to live in a boarding house to check them out online at any time and from any place, avoiding the need to survey them in person.

As of 2021, Mamikos introduced Singgahsini, a standardized boarding-room administration and marketing management service. The service is presently available in Jakarta, Bandung and Jatinangor, Yogyakarta, Solo, Semarang, Surabaya and Malang.

"Mamikos aims to continuously ensure success to its partners and ease to their tenants. ... Our website [remains committed] to help boarding house owners promote their places and tenants find their ideal boarding home," she said.