Institut Teknologi Bandung

KBMK has 11 competition categories, one of them is Scientific Paper. This year, KBMK raised the theme “Nation’s Youth Innovation to Eliminate Poverty and Ecosystem Potential Empowerment of Clean and Affordable Energy in the Context of Post-Covid-19 Era Preparation for Business, Management, and Finance”. Adapting to the pandemic situation, the event was held online from 19th April to 15th September 2020 hosted by the University of Indonesia.

Starting from an invitation sent by Management Program, Fa’iq got a chance to represent SBM ITB at the event. However, he couldn’t seem to find a partner. Until Dany, part of the academic tutor division, suggest Fa’iq pick a partner from the top 5 in the GBF Bootcamp event held a few months back. That is when he found Aurel for his partner. They already had a plan to compete together as a team, and Fa’iq has the feeling that now’s the time.

3 stages must be passed by the two students of ITB to become the champions. First, they have to submit their scientific paper. The paper emphasizes the analysis of problems and solutions of poverty in the post-pandemic in Indonesia. Second, they need to submit a digital poster. If they passed the first 2 stages, they had to make a speech and submit their final paper.

In their paper, Fa’iq and Aurel proposed Bizlab as a solution. Bizlam is a mentoring platform for MSME business actors. In addition, by constructing labs in various regions through this program, MSME actors will later collaborate on creative projects with other MSME actors. The hope is that, by having mentors who are an expert in the business field and various collaborative projects, MSMEs in Indonesia can find a unique selling point and have a competitive advantage to compete with foreign products after the pandemic.

“We analyzed the background problem of poverty in Indonesia. And we are more focused on solving the problem by the root,’ said Aurel. From this paper, the Adamar team was finally going for the finals. it was at this moment, they face the toughest challenge. They have to make a speech without text, which was different from what they usually do in business presentations.

It doesn’t stop there, the speech preparation is also an exhausting challenge. Due to the lack of preparation and tight academic schedule, they have to rack their brains to make time and complete the speech. However, they were shocked when they found out that the submission link for the speeches was closed at 1 AM.

“We were panic, we haven’t even finished yet,” said Fa’iq, laughing as he reminisced about it. “We did the best that we could to make the speech and memorized it. We ended up sleeping in shifts,” he recalls.

When practicing the speech, it didn’t go smoothly. The Adamar team had to repeat it three times because Fa’iq had difficulty remembering the script. However, it all paid off in the end because on the final, which was the same day, their speech went smoothly and they finally came out as the first winner.

“It was a very exciting journey together with Fa'iq because honestly, this is my first time to get first place in a competition in college. And the effort we make is quite well because we barely even know anything about a scientific paper. But after we did some brainstorming and exploration together, although the final wasn’t smooth either, in the end, we did it anyway. My point is, you have to be brave to try because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t know how it will turn out,” said Aurel ending the interview session.

Reporter: Najin Khoirul Amalin (Mahasiswa TPB SBM, 2020)
Translator: Aghisna Syifa R (Biologi, 2020)