Hult Prize is a start-up competition that aims to generate business ideas that solve world’s problem. This year’s Hult Prize rised the topic “Youth Employment” or how to create business ideas to provide ten thousands of employment for youths for the following ten years.

The solution that Ganeshaprise offered is a digital platform that empowers 1,902 villages in Indonesia and emphasizes on the village’s growth. One of the way is by exploiting the village’s natural beauty and in turns will generate employments on the village. The platform is expected to be a medium that connects tourists with the potential villages.

Ganeshaprise Team have expectation that their digital platform will emerge 226 potential villages in Indonesia and will generate 45.200 employments for the next ten years. They named the start-up “DoSoon”, a wordplay for Indonesian word dusun which means ‘village’.

Marie, Pasasa Fridericiana Marie’s nickname, and her team have prepared well for the competition. On December 2018, they got the announcement as participants that passed the first phase. Then, they had four months to prepare the materials well. “Because we come from different study programs, often we got problems such as unmatched schedules and different views. But we make it as a challenge (to face) until finally we won the phase,” Marie said.

For their creative idea, will, and grit, they won the first place in regional final phase. After the phase, they will attend a 6 weeks business incubation, and then compete on the final in London on July. Ganeshaprise team is the only representative of ITB and Indonesia that won the first place in regional level. The regional phase is held in 30 different countries, and winner of each region will compete in London. The participants will be advised by the best lecturers, professors, and CEO of their respective fields to deepen their ideas and designed system. Six finalists will be selected to compete in the Global Final Round in Boston on September 2019.

“It is highly competitive, especially because many of our competitors already hold master’s degree. We once lost our hope for winning. Even more so when pitching is allocated only for 6 minutes. But thanks God we did it,” said Immanuel Deo as the team leader.

Ganeshaprise Team hope that they can win the final so that they can implement their idea in Indonesia, since it is also their motivation to participate in the competition. “Pray for us to bring pride to Indonesia in the final of Hult Prize in London,” Albert said.

“Through our government’s program that encourage funding for enhancement of tourism income, we believe that ‘DoSoon’ will get support from government agency, independent agency, or ITB which since 2015 has moved towards ‘Entrepreneurial University’,” added Marie.

Reporter: Elisabeth Sirumapea (ITB Journalist Apprentice 2019)