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JAJAKA: connecting youth entrepreneurs to opportunities in Bandung, Indonesia

This blog is written by S²Cities hackathon winners from Bandung, who have developed a digital-app based business service for entrepreneurs.

JAJAKA is a micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) application for youth that combines several specialisations including technology, business, and spatial analysis. This application was developed by five civil engineering students from Institut Teknologi Bandung, including Salma Yuwani Nadhifa, Muslina Syahril, Yohana Natasya Silalahi, Iqbal Almuntarie, and Bram Sandika Tarigan.

 

 

Image 1: Team Jajaka at Pasupati Film Park, showcasing information about their mobile app

 

 

Bandung City is recognized as a City of Design by UNESCO. Bandung has also joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, which means this city has proven itself as a creative city, ranging from education, community activities, and its local works. For this reason, not only the government, the community, and especially the youth need to encourage and maintain various ideas and activities that can offer creative solutions to every problem in the city of Bandung. One that needs attention is the entrepreneurial sector. The Global Entrepreneurship Index shows that developed countries have an average number of entrepreneurs of 14% of the total population. Based on the 2016 Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) census, the number of entrepreneurs in Bandung is still low, reaching only 4% of the total population and at the national level only reaches 3.1% of the population.

 

The low interest of the Bandung community in entrepreneurship, especially among the youth, is mainly caused by the high risk of business failure, especially for small businesses. According to research, 20% of small businesses fail within the first year, 50% go bankrupt after five years, and only 30% survive for 10 years or more. This is certainly a common problem faced by new business comers as well as a fear for young people who want to start a business, including in the city of Bandung.

 

According to Market Research data published by the World Economic Forum in 2021, it was found that 99% of MSMEs failed to develop due to incompatibility of the products presented with market needs. In addition, based on the research that we, the JAJAKA team, conducted, there are several other causes, such as inadequate business planning skills, there is no platform that can bring together business actors/ practitioners/ experts with business pioneers, and mismatch in choosing a business start-up location.

 

Image 2: An application that provides information on location or potential

business products with the aim of helping initiate the growth of a UMKM.

 

 

Therefore, we present JAJAKA, a digital application-based business service that seeks to improve the business development of MSME communities in Bandung. We have the main target of young people, in this case Generation Z, who have a high entrepreneurial spirit supported by their technological literacy skills. The features presented through this application are as follows.

  1. BONGBOLONGAN is a feature that can provide services in the form of MSME databases that already exist in Bandung. In addition, the advantages that can be obtained through this feature can provide product recommendations or potential locations to users (young people) who want to start their business, especially for food stalls and laundry entrepreneurs as an initial milestone.
  2. NGAJARKEUN is a feature that can actively bring together business pioneers or those who already have a business with expertise in the business field. Through this feature, users can consult with experts and practitioners, especially in the business field.
  3. FRANCHISE: This feature can make it easier for users to become franchisees. Simply put, through this feature, users can obtain information or even partner with franchisees (franchisors) on their capital and business interests. In the future, as part of the plan, JAJAKA is also expected to be able to conduct crowdfunding with funding partners both nationally and privately.

 

Image 3: Glimpses of the application interface

 

 

The presence of JAJAKA as a business platform is expected to be a business solution on one hand. The features are conceived and presented as a continuous process to provide product recommendations and potential locations as the initial stage for pioneers. In the future, JAJAKA will provide several consulting services that are expected to accompany the journey of business pioneering carried out by young people. The objective of this entire program is to provide education and guidance to young people who are starting to penetrate the business and to those who are in the process of business development. The guidance and recommendations provided are expected to reduce the risk of failure to realise a sustainable business.

 

We collaborate with various parties to implement the JAJAKA application. In developing JAJAKA, we collaborate with the IT Incubator, which is an expert agency under the auspices of the ITB Informatics Student Association (HMIF) that serves the manufacture of various IT- based products. We also work with consultants from WRI Indonesia to make a spatial analysis as part of one of the excellent features in the JAJAKA application, as well as the private sector that assists in the development process of JAJAKA products. In addition to the parties involved, we also collaborate with parties who assist in introducing JAJAKA to the public.

 

JAJAKA’s launch to the public was at “SAUJANA”, a program held by Di Bawah Jembatan in Pasopati Film Park, as one of the projects under the auspices of S2Cities. We also had the opportunity to become one of the partners in CIMB Niaga’s Kejar Mimpi community fair, and got a chance to promote JAJAKA to young people broadly. To expand users from JAJAKA, we had the opportunity to be a collaborator in the Paguyuban Karya Salemba Empat event, which is socialisation for groups of housewives in Cisitu, who are home-based business actors.

 

 

Image 4: JAJAKA booth during Saujana event

 

 

Until now, JAJAKA continues to optimise the features that have been built and will develop some features that can solve entrepreneurial problems comprehensively. JAJAKA also continues to socialise the application through digital marketing, through Instagram social media, and conventional socialisation from community to community. Hopefully, JAJAKA can be an application that can help young people’s business planning in Bandung City to have a high success rate. Start your step with us, JAJAKA!

 

Learn more about the JAJAKA initiative here.

 

 

References:

https://www.bandung.go.id/news/read/2722/kota-bandung-masuk-dalam-jaringan-unesco- creative-cities-network-uccn

 

https://www.jawapos.com/ekonomi/01440794/tingkat-wirausaha-indonesia-masih-rendah

 

https://news.republika.co.id/berita/pcfg45396/jumlah-pengusaha-di-kota-bandung-masih- minim

 

https://entrepreneur.bisnis.com/read/20210901/52/1436612/4-alasan-utama-bisnis-skala- kecil-gagal-dan-bangkrut

 

https://swa.co.id/swa/trends/riset-pasar-ini-paparkan-penyebab-99-umkm-gagal- mengembangkan-usaha

 

 

Further Reading