8villages Agricultural Information Service as a Lesson for Startups in Indonesia

8villages is one of the startups that is growing in Indonesia and is targeting a market that is largely abandoned by most startups. Farmers using feature phones may be the combination that is considered the most "uncool" for our startups who usually refer to Silicon Valley -- where almost all of them already use smartphones. Indonesia is clearly a unique market, like most developing countries in Asia, because users feature phone still dominant. Market feature phone definitely not a reason not to monetize. mig33 with its business model over the years has proven this assumption to be incorrect.

This service is built when farmers with all their limitations need accurate information to help grow and raise crops in their fields and gardens, such as weather, rainfall, level of consumer needs, selling price level and costs that need to be incurred for farming.

8villages which was founded by Mathieu Le Bras and partnered with Yusep Rosmansyah was clearly built with passion, because the data supplied is not just feed which are easily available on the Internet. From there, 8villages found a profit-sharing business model with cellular operators for every SMS message sent. 8villages build LISA database who collaborated with academics to initiate a question and answer forum related to agricultural activities.

With the large potential of consumers and precisely 8villages collaborating with partners, including academics, this startup seems to have gone in the expected direction. Furthermore, 8villages has the potential to expand its services to neighboring countries (eg Vietnam and the Philippines) where farmers have similar problems. Once embraced the oar, two or three islands were crossed. The fact that this field has high potential is the presence of giant Nokia with its Life Tools targeting similar markets in developing countries.

8villages provides important lessons for startup activists in Indonesia about the importance of knowing consumers and recognizing the problems that exist. The character of the Indonesian people as consumers determines how a startup develops. Execution accompanied by passion to solve a problem will undoubtedly help startups to survive and grow.

Consumers who are still using feature phone apparently not a problem, because the use of SMS is still easier to monetize than applications on smartphones. The large number makes traction which is generated is larger and the next one makes fee small per consumer also doubles with continuous use. Imagine if 70% of farmers in one province were customers of this service. How about in two or three more provinces? But that's not all, it's our goal to build a technology-based startup in Indonesia.

Let's as startup activists ask ourselves, do the services we provide provide benefits to the wider community and not only dwell on profit projections? Hopefully the story about 8villages will be an introspection for all of us.

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