Rather than Pursuing Quantity, the Quality of Indonesian Entrepreneurs is More Urgent to Improve

Entering the fifth year of operation in Indonesia, Endeavor Indonesia held Scale-Up Asia 2017 with the theme "High Impact Entrepreneur". This theme was raised to strengthen Indonesia's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

BPS recorded an increase of 4 million entrepreneurs in the last 10 years. In terms of quantity, this is of course a breath of fresh air, although it is not enough to help support the country's economic growth. However, if you look at the quality side, it can backfire because there are many entrepreneurs who make businesses not necessarily able to continue to last long due to the high level of competition.

Therefore, through this opportunity, Endeavor Indonesia, a non-profit organization that has been established since 1997 and focuses on developing high impact entrepreneur, emphasizes that in the world of entrepreneurship it is more important to improve quality than quantity.

Because according to Endeavor, entrepreneurs should be able to have an impact on society, support the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and become a catalyst for the country's economy.

As an illustration, 19 Endeavor Entrepreneurs from 17 companies in Indonesia were able to create 6.340 new jobs and contribute to the economy of IDR 2,2 trillion in 2015. Currently Endeavor Indonesia already has 35 entrepreneurs from 28 companies in its network.

Globally, Endeavor is present in more than 25 countries around the world. The organization has selected 1.421 high impact entrepreneur from 886 countries. In total, the entrepreneurs who are members of Endeavor have generated revenues of US$8,16 billion and created 600 thousand high-quality jobs.

"We believe that high impact entrepreneurs can create a conducive entrepreneurial cycle, in the long term able to contribute to Indonesia's sustainable economic development. The Scale-Up event is here as a forum to build a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem and support more high impact entrepreneurs," said Endeavor Indonesia Board Chairman Must Hajadi, Wednesday (15/3).

This event brought together more than 1.000 young entrepreneurs, ranging from CEOs, investors, business people, leading government figures in Indonesia to discuss and develop networks.

In the series of events, for one full day the minds will be filled with various activities. In the morning, they will take part in various panel discussions with different themes filled by expert mentors in their respective fields.

Then in the afternoon it was continued with Mega Scale-Up Clinic, presenting 150 mentors with 370 mentees. In this session, the minds can ask one question topic with a mentor who has determined the location for each theme. They can only discuss with a duration of 20-25 minutes. For further discussion, minds can arrange the next meeting with the mentor on a separate agenda. Finally, in the evening all mentors and mentees will attend a dinner together.

"This Endeavor becomes an umbrella community gathering mentors and minds in supporting businesses that can have a social impact. The mentors who are members here have given their commitment to provide separate discussion sessions with the minds who want to ask more deeply," explained RUMA CEO Aldi Haryopratomo.

President and CEO of Maybank Indonesia Taswin Zakaria added that the company sees this activity in line with Maybank's mission to humanizing financial services which means that the company will always be in the midst of the community. The trick is to empower the community through the provision of financial services, including to entrepreneurs.

"Forums like this can be a place for mentors to share experiences and perspectives for entrepreneurs who are just starting a business. Previously, we have been sponsors for several times related to the development of the entrepreneurial world," said Taswin.

Ready to revise the rules that hinder the world of entrepreneurship

Meanwhile, from the government side, in this case Bekraf, Head of Bekraf Triawan Munaf explained that this year his party will focus on revising the old rules or called "Game-changing policy year." Bekraf will focus on identifying which regulations need to be revised in each sub-sector in Bekraf.

One of the sub-sectors that Bekraf has "secured" is the film industry, in relation to the exclusion of films from the negative investment list (DNI) last year.

"This year we will focus on game changing policy year. Currently, there are many old rules that hinder the movement of the creative economy, we are still identifying them based on their level of urgency. For films [out of the DNI], there are still 15 more sub-sectors that will be facilitated," said Triawan.

According to him, the revision of the rules will make it easier for entrepreneurs to run their business so that they can easily compete globally and domestically. At the same time, it is a real effort by the government to protect them from the invasion of imported products, the majority of which come from China.