4 Startups to Tackle Your Small-Business Problems

Published on July 2, 2021

Photo Credits: 123rf/ Portrait of asian young male cafe owner with tablet.

MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) play an essential role in contributing to Indonesia’s economic growth. The number of MSME players in Indonesia, based on the data published by Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs of Republic of Indonesia, has reached almost 65 million or equivalent to 99% of the total business players in Indonesia. You might be one of them!

Unfortunately, the data also stated, only 10.25 million MSME players are connected to the digital platform. It is undeniable that digital literacy, such as using technology that can help business efficiency, is still poorly understood by MSME players—considering that this scale’s number of business players is so large with the uneven distribution of information and technology in Indonesia.

MSMEs generally face several challenges in their business. Ranging from business processes that are still traditional, including business bookkeeping, inefficient product procurement processes due to limited access to time and distance, and the lack of access to credit all lead to the inefficiency of operational business processes.

Now, we have four startups present to help MSME players in solving these various problems. The services and products offered by these four startups are worth a try because they can help your business operations become more efficient from upstream to downstream.

Ula

This service is proven to increase daily profits by up to 15%. This result is calculated from the longer duration of the store opening, the possibility of reduced inventory, to competitive stock purchase prices.

Ula, which initially focused on providing FMCG products, has begun expanding other product categories tailored to stalls’ specific needs. Ula plans to continue to add its product categories, such as electronics and clothing. In addition, Ula also provides services that allow MSMEs to perform financial management and merchandise stock management through one application.

Launched in 2020, Ula has reached more than 25 thousand stall owners. This number has increased 40 times. Their operational points are spread across East Java, Central Java, and West Java.

“One of our missions when designing Ula was for shop owners to monitor the delivery process, and this service has proven to have a very positive impact on small retailers,” said Riky Tenggara, Co-Founder & COO of Ula.

BukuWarung Photo Credits: BukuWarung

The following startup that can help encourage MSME business growth is BukuWarung. There is no doubt in the acuteness in the problem that they are trying to solve as proven by the more than 6.5 million merchants spread across 750 cities in Indonesia that have used the BukuWarung service. BukuWarung has processed approximately $1.4 billion in annual payments and is ready to process more than $10 billion in yearly payments by 2022. So, what are the advantages of BukuWarung?

BukuWarung is an application that can help MSMEs perform bookkeeping (record all business financial transactions so that the business runs more efficiently and practically). If initially, MSME business players used manual records, now they can switch to digital records through BukuWarung.

Furthermore, BukuWarung is a great help for the MSMEs who give credit (Indonesians call kasbon) to their customers as BukuWarung provides a feature to collect these credits digitally, allowing the MSMEs to get their money back without having to feel bad (which is a strong culture in Indonesia).

Photo Credits: BukuWarung

As a holistic service, BukuWarung assists MSME players in recording transactions, billing, and paying through one platform. As an added value, transactions made at BukuWarung are free of admin fees. MSME players who use BukuWarung can also monitor their daily sales profits automatically.

In the future, BukuWarung plans to add more financial services for MSMEs, such as savings, insurance, and loans to their platform. Ultimately, BukuWarung aims to become the bridge for these MSMEs to financial services by enabling MSMEs to present financial information for applying to any type of financial service.

“We have run successful lending experiments with partners in fintech and banks and are on track to monetize our merchants supported by deep payments, accounting, and other data we collect,” said Abhinay Peddisetty, Co-Founder and CEO BukuWarung.

ESB

Photo Credits: ESB

For MSMEs engaged in the Food and Beverages (F&B) sector, ESB can be a solution for your business. This SaaS startup provides a variety of comprehensive solutions for restaurants.

ESB offers integrated solutions that can solve various problems faced by F&B players. Starting from providing solutions for ordering, POS (Point of Sales), KDS (Kitchen Display System), CDS (Customer Display System), kiosks, loyalty, and ERP and presently has had full stacks integrated software for entire restaurants operation from ordering, delivering and restocking.

“Given our experience as a problem solver for many F&B clients, we see that restaurants will lose revenue of 10% or more due to inefficiency. Therefore, three aspects must be improved: order and outlet management, HQ and operations, and purchases and vendors. The solution can be solved using technology,” explained Gunawan, Co-Founder & CEO of ESB.

Photo Credits: ESB

During this pandemic season, ESB proves to be a tremendous help to the customers they are serving by improving their efficiencies of operation, enabling mobile ordering for dine-in (which is a mandatory feature for restaurants these days), and allowing restaurants to have an independently managed delivery service. Due to this, ESB has become a necessity to their customers which include Ismaya group, Boga group, and MAP Boga.

ESB positions itself as a player that only focuses on the F&B business. This is the difference between ESB and other competitors. Because it focuses on one sector, ESB is able to present the concept of community-based software where ESB can solve the problems of a brand. The solution is implanted in the form of enhancement and causes other brands to enjoy its development. As a result, ESB software has become very sharp in overcoming F&B business problems.

ESB services continue to be developed, and now they have touched the realm of the B2B marketplace to help the process of procuring or supplying materials for restaurants easily and safely. F&B business people don’t need to invest more in logistics or warehouses. Business Intelligence (BI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are also some of the services offered by ESB.

Interestingly, ESB collaborates with several players in the financial services industry to provide business loans if their users want to take their business to the next level.

Majoo

Photo Credits: Majoo

Are you looking for comprehensive MSME business management services? Majoo is the answer. Majoo is a super-complete application for MSME business players. It starts from an online cashier application equipped with different navigation for each type of business, inventory, finance and accounting applications, attendance and employees, CRM, and business analysis you can find on Majoo.

Majoo also provides a dashboard that can be easily accessed via computers and smartphones. This application helps MSME businesses digitize their business operations to allow business players to run their business more efficiently. Majoo features Kitchen Display, Order Display, and Self Order features.

“Under Majoo’s mission to advance MSMEs with financial technology innovation to accelerate the growth of Indonesia’s digital economy, we support MSMEs to advance to class and open market access to the digital world. We believe that MSMEs play an important role in supporting the Indonesian economy. We also believe that every MSME should have the same opportunity to access technology and the digital economy that can help MSMEs to grow,” said CEO & Founder of Majoo Adi Wahyu Rahadi.

As the next goal for Majoo, Majoo wants to help traditional MSMEs to sell online by providing an easy integration to online marketplaces and seamless inventory management across all the marketplaces which the users are selling. This plan is to support MSMEs during the pandemic which enforce the importance of selling online for all MSMEs.

These startup lines offer opportunities for MSME business people to transform their businesses and achieve much better business growth. The visions and missions brought by these four startups are in line with AC Ventures, namely to impact the environment better. AC Ventures believes there is tremendous value in providing solutions to MSMEs and opportunities to enter the Indonesian consumer market through these MSMEs.