Amaan App Encourages Micro-Women Entrepreneurs to Move Up

Sharia-based services and capacity building for women, especially in the micro segment, have a significant role in driving Indonesia's economic growth. Since the last few years, startup activists have begun to explore business models and innovations to accommodate the needs in this segment.

Exploration was also carried out by Ratih Rachmawaty, Mulia Salim, and Taras Siregar with their years of experience in the Islamic banking industry. Finally, they became directors of BTPN Syariah, one of the leading Islamic banks that has been listed on the stock exchange. The trio together with Johny Ng, an IT professional, founded Amaan, a sharia digital platform for micro women entrepreneurs. Today, March 8, 2021, Amaan has been operating for a year.

Amaan positioned as a platform beyond financial services which currently serves consumers in six provinces (Banten, West Java, Central Java, East Java, South Sumatra, and Lampung), 100 districts and 1700 sub-districts.

What services does the company provide and how is it positioned in the market? To answer that question, DailySocial had the opportunity to talk with the Amaan team, represented by Head of Go-to-Market Strategy Herman Haryanto, Head of People & Culture Fitri Dianasari, and Digital Product Lead Ahmad Zarkasi.

Amaan's stance

Amaan was incubated and built approximately two years ago, starting from ideas, business models, platforms, to recruitment of relevant talents. According to the Founder of Amaan, this idea was born from their experience serving the micro nano segment. They see that there are still many business actors who have limited capital to build a business and not many can accommodate this need. In fact, many MSMEs are run and owned by women.

Based on reports ministry of cooperatives and SMEsCurrently, there are 64,19 million MSMEs in Indonesia, of which 99,92% are businesses in the micro and small segments. Of this total, around 34% of medium-sized businesses are run by women, while 56% of small businesses and 52% of micro-enterprises are owned by women.

This explains why in the early stages Amaan entered through financial solutions services by becoming financing agent. Amaan is an extension of financial institutions in opening access to financing for women micro entrepreneurs. Amaan carries out the function of a financing agent as a entry point which became the forerunner of Amaan to boost other services.

Along the way, the founders of Amaan discovered that female MSME actors do not only need access to financing or financial services. "Para founder We always emphasize that financial institutions are definitely needed. But our society needs more than just access to finance. They need other aspects that will enable them to reach the level of 'whole human beings', insan kamil," Fitri said.

This condition encourages the development of Amaan's business not only in the financial sector, but also in other needs for these micro women entrepreneurs.

Financing Agent in the Digital Finance Innovation category

Amaan is listed as financing agent in the OJK Digital Financial Innovation (IKD) category. The company launched for the first time to coincide with International Women's Day, which is March 8, 2021, a day that is considered to be an important momentum to encourage the empowerment of women entrepreneurs in Indonesia.

Amaan provides various features other than financial solutions, namely, Shopping, Healthy Talk, Learning, and Promotional Forum features. All of these services are designed with the hope of realizing The three main goals of micro women entrepreneurs are sending their children to the highest level, owning/renovating a dream house, and going for Hajj/Umrah..

"Why did we build services on a 'wholesale' basis? We did research, talked to women. When asked what their expectations were for digital services, they simply said they wanted to have the same access to various digital services as people in big cities. We have known this for a long time, but at that time our movements were limited because we were still working at the bank," said Herman.

From shopping to promotion forum

Fitri and Zarkasi explained further regarding the development of other products or services. All of these services are designed based on consumer research and the problems they face in the field. The Amaan app is available for Android users and has been downloaded more than a million times. App rating is on a scale of 4.3.

In the Financing feature, users can monitor the amount of capital received, when to pay installments, to the remaining capital. In the Shopping feature, Zarkasi admits that this service is one that has been developed further and operates in several areas. Shopping Service using the concept group buying leveraging the Amaan user community base.

With this model, Amaan hopes to overcome the problems of mothers who really care about product prices and the problem of trust when shopping online. "By buying various basic necessities at lower prices, Amaan users can saving more," said Zarkasi.

In accordance with Amaan's development principles, all products that will be launched are designed with a partnership model. Just like financing, Amaan hasn't thought about building a system yet supply chain leaders separately to operate the Shopping service. They choose collaboration with partners.

Furthermore, Amaan has prepared a Healthy Talk feature that makes it easier for users to consult with general practitioners and psychologists. This service has not yet been fully released and is a trial run. Likewise, the Learning feature provides easy access to a variety of article, video, and video-based content podcast for free. "For this service, our direction is to provide educational services, where children of business owners can subscribe to learning modules," said Fitri.

Next, users can optimize the Financial Records feature to monitor incoming income and expenses. Business actors can promote their products on the Amaan platform. As befits a classifieds platform, ordering and shipping goods in this segment is done without platform involvement.

These services are one of Amaan's strategies to encourage user loyalty (or what is commonly called .). retention rate).

"Essentially, financial services became a kind of hook or entry point to our target market. When they are attracted to use case first, we will open with use case others, for example Shopping, so that it can be done directly in our application. We want to try to understand journey users after getting financing. Wre they excited with other services that are teaser this? All that so insight to do more in-depth consumer research for further development," said Zarkasi.

Hybrid approach and digital inclusion

As mentioned at the outset, Amaan seeks to bring value proposition different from other digital platforms. According to Fitri, her party does not want to only enter through financial inclusion, but also involves digital inclusion in order to increase the literacy of women entrepreneurs.

From the field research they encountered, there are still many mothers who are not digitally literate, let alone understand digital terms, such as understanding and how OTP works, how to download applications, or how to create emails.

“One of our values ​​is to educate consumers in using digital services and managing finances. Then, another value is caring about women entrepreneurs and their families. Third, discipline in carrying out daily tasks, which we try to teach through the application," said Fitri.

For that, Amaan used a hybrid approach by marrying a touch of technology and human interaction in several features so that users can use the service. The KYC (Know Your Customer) interaction process is carried out directly (offline)  and the results are reported to partner banks.

In financing agency services, Amaan employs a Community Development Partner (CDP) or called "Idaman Sister" to foster "Idaman Mother" (community leaders) which houses the community of mothers. 

In the Shopping and Financing service, new users can use this service on a hybrid basis (self-service and accompanied by CDP). "Not all services will be accompanied by CDP in the future because CDP only helps with socialization. We have arranged all of this for the next five years, where they assisted until it becomes self-service. [For features] Teleconsultation or learning services, all self-service, said Herman. 

brand positioning

With a variety of product descriptions, business models and how they work, how does Amaan position its platform in the market? Herman emphasized that Amaan was developed to be more than just a platform that provides financial services. They are not online loan products or P2P platforms lending.

According to her, there is no digital platform in Indonesia that provides various digital services for women entrepreneurs, especially for the ultra-micro segment. 

Talking about his plans for 2022, Herman ensured that at this time his party would still focus on increasing the availability of services in six provinces. According to him, market penetration in these areas still has great opportunities to be improved.

“Amaan is a platform that helps mothers access financing and other services for daily life, be it health services, shopping, or education. Amaan is a 'Digital Mass Market Ecosystem Platform' to empower women entrepreneurs and families."