Discussing Business Continuity Strategy with Startup Actors and Venture Capitalists

There are many challenges that startups face during the pandemic, from the declining number of clients to stagnating business income. Even though startups felt the toughest challenges in the early days of the pandemic, in the last few months, the situation has been claimed to have gotten much better and is gradually recovering.

In a webinar initiated by Venture Capital Association for Indonesian Startups (AMVESINDO), three startup activists represented by Cashlez Co-Founder & CEO Tee Teddy Setiawan, ProSehat Founder & Chairman of Healthtech.id Gregorius Bimantoro, and SiCepat CMO Wiwin Dewi Herawati, shared their experiences on how to properly deal with business challenges during a pandemic.

Investigate the right steps

There were some interesting notes which were then conveyed by representatives of the startup community during the webinar session. Although it is undeniable that there has been a decline in income, seeing the changing consumer patterns during the pandemic who fully utilize digital services, has become the main focus of startups such as SiCepat and Cashlez.

As a technology-based financial service, Cashlez have number merchant which is quite diverse, from service entertainment to p2p loans. Even though he admits that some services have experienced drastic declines, on the other hand, the services are then utilized by the platform E-commerce actually increased.

"In the third quarter and into the fourth we saw an increase in Cashlez's business. This momentum then became good for us to be able to focus on growingcapture existing target market," said Teddy.

Meanwhile, for services logistics presented by SiCepat, the pandemic actually provides a better opportunity for companies to embrace more customers. Not only focusing on delivering goods in large volumes and capacities, but SiCepat also offers a choice of shipping valuables with smaller volumes and sizes.

"Right now we are in a period of survive"At the beginning of the pandemic, we experienced a decline of more than 30 percent for land and air logistics by almost 80 percent," said Wiwin.

By implementing diversification, SiCepat claims to be able to run a business and of course it can survive during the pandemic until it enters conditions new normal.

One of the services that later became the prima donna during the pandemic was service healthtech. Not only is it able to accelerate online doctor consultation services, with a variety of products that are increasingly varied, such as embedding technology artificial intelligence to genetics, now platform healthtech the more players.

"During the pandemic, services targeting the B2B segment did experience a decline. But on the other hand, services targeting B2C actually experienced an increase. Even though it was not optimal, healthtech players themselves still had limitations to provide more comprehensive services due to the existing rules and regulations. set," said Gregory.

PMV performance during the pandemic

Although there are several venture capital companies (PMV) that delay investing in startups during the pandemic, this has not caused some fundraising activities to decrease in number. Amvesiondo noted that there were 52 funding transactions conducted by PMV for startups, with total funding reaching $1,9 billion.

This not only shows the confidence of investors in startups, but also the ongoing collaboration between PMV and startups in these times of crisis, indicating PMV's optimism and confidence in the growth potential of national startup players.

AMVESINDO views that these companies are able to demonstrate their ability to change the industrial landscape (new normal), provide added value, and solve problems faced by customers and consumers.

"Pandemic does not mean startups have to be silent, conditions like this are actually a momentum for startups to maximize their efforts to run a business in order to survive," said AMVESINDO Honorary Board Member Nicko Widjaja.

Nicko also added that on behalf of BRI Ventures, so far, he has invested in 8 startups. BRI Ventures has also launched a new management named “Sembrani Nusantara Venture Fund". Fund This is a new vehicle for BRI Ventures to fund startups early stage who plays in the segment non-fintech, such as education, agro-maritime, retail, transportation, and health.

Meanwhile, according to AMVESINDO Secretary General Eddi Danusaputro, not only focusing on investing in new startups, PMV must also pay attention to Existing their portfolio. Although not all of them intend to raise funds at this time, it is also necessary to provide relevant support, utilizing the existing ecosystem.

"I also saw that during the pandemic there were several interesting sectors to explore and certainly beneficial not only for PMV but also the general public. Namely the agritech sector, those who target agriculture and other related matters are of concern to us at MCI." said Eddie.

Startups play a role in national economic recovery through collaboration with government programs, such as startup services agritech which helps channel government financing for farmers, and collaboration between provider startups digitalsignature and digital identity with banking institutions to facilitate the credit restructuring process.

"For that in the future, it is necessary to have rules and regulations that support startup businesses, especially from regulators," said AMVESINDO Treasurer Edward Ismawan Chamdani.