East Ventures Launches "Warung Pintar", Integrates Retail Technology Products of Partner Startups

East Ventures has announced their second project after the success of co-working space EV Hive. This time they set up "Warung Pintar", which is a shop designed to enable digitization to target the most basic level of society. Through data management and analysis, his vision seeks to open up new opportunities in terms of financial inclusion, social security, behavioral analysis, interaction with the community and monitoring of social influence.

This effort itself is a continuation of East Ventures' commitment to be active in technology projects for the public interest, a commitment that started since the creation of the Creating Shared Value (CSV) Unit. The concept of warung was chosen because it is considered to have become a culture of people's lives in Indonesia. Warung Pintar wants to empower segments of society who have not been exposed to the digital world much. In this initial phase, there are already 8 Smart Warungs spread across the Greater Jakarta area.

"Warung, as a form of traditional micro-enterprise, has existed since the 19th century and has been closely united with local culture. And with the fact that technology should be accessible to anyone, Warung is the right place for all Indonesian people to take part in digital economy," said the CEO of Warung Pintar Agung Bezharie. Previously, Agung served as Investment Associate at East Ventures.

Take advantage of IoT technology, big data analytics and blockchain

Technology implementation for Warung Pintar comes in 3 pillars, namely IoT (Internet of Things), big data analytics and blockchains. The application of IoT aims to improve the accuracy of retail data entry. Big data analytics will be used to better understand customer behavior, as well as blockchain to create transparency and trust in shop owners. To streamline its development, two business technology experts, Sofian Hadiwijaya and Pandu Kartika Putra were recruited.

Sofian is responsible as a leader for the technical team. His experience as a builder of the technology community and high-ranking officials at Kudo, Pinjam.co.id and Go-Jek is considered to have an impact on growth for Warung Pintar. Meanwhile, Pandu is an Associate of Civic Project for East Ventures. Previously, he was a technology specialist for the public interest and has been involved in several activities such as Code for Bandung and Code4Nation.

"Although the adoption of digital platforms by consumers and merchants has high momentum in Indonesia, we recognize that there are groups of people who cannot enjoy it due to their lack of exposure to the digital world as a whole. Warung Pintar takes a different approach to serving this segment by not only providing a platform digital, but also build physical platforms for them. We build solutions end-to-end starting from land search, funding, promotion, to marketing. Warung Pintar is the answer from new retailer," said East Ventures' managing partner Willson Cuaca.

Cooperation and integration mechanisms with East Ventures partners

Willson explained, Warung Pintar offers a form of cooperation in the form of partnerships with shop owners. The shop owners only need to give their commitment, honesty and time to repair the shop whenever needed. This project itself contradicts the economic unit E-commerce existing ones with a smaller average number of purchases, non-repetitive buyers and relatively smaller profits. Nevertheless, Warung Pintar is a symbol of the integration of the East Ventures portfolio, given the large application of technology solutions from East Ventures' investment companies in this project.

The Warung Smart cashier uses the MokaPOS system. Financial and accounting records use the Journal system. Customers can also top up their credit and buy tickets and other items through Kudo's services here. Product procurement and distribution system last mile provided by Do-cart. Warehouse distribution system managed by Waresix. In addition, all stalls are always ready to meet the needs of EV Hive customers co-working space.