ITB Students Won Business Innovation Competition for an Outdoor Wear Design

By Adi Permana

Editor Adi Permana

*Photo by the team

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – As hiking becomes a trending hobby, ITB students develop “Triptole”, a 3 in 1 device that integrates tripod, selfie stick, and trekking pole functions. With this device, hikers do not need to bring all those three separate devices anymore. Fadillah Muna’azat, Jayanti Ramadhany, dan Hanin Nuraini, all of who come from Environmental Engineering of ITB class of 2016, are the ones who develop the device.

Fadillah said that TRIPTOLE was initially an innovation that took part in Students Creativity Week (PKM), but advanced only up to monitoring and evaluation (monev) phase. Looking at a quite big potential and opportunity, Fadillah and her friends resubmit Triptole to other competitions with several adjustment done.

For Triptole’s prototype, the team won the 1st place in 2019 Ekuitas Creative Economic Week (ETICS) competition held last March at STIE Ekuitas, Bandung. First, the team successfully beat dozens of other teams on the qualifier. Then, Triptole team competed on the final against 5 other teams which come from several universities in Indonesia, including Shanz Team from SBM-ITB which won the 2nd place and Jireka Oil from Undip which won the 3rd title.

Triptole also championed Sriwijaya Entrepreneur Competition (Section organized by Universitas Sriwijaya in Palembang on 14-16 April 2019

Triptole is made of aluminum with a shape that resembles other common trekking pole. The size is 20x50 cm; it weighs at 770 gram and can hold up to 500 kN. Travelers and photography enthusiasts are the two main market target of Triptole and planned to be sell on markets for two hundred thousand rupiah. To produce the prototype, the team was helped by third party.

According to Fadillah, Triptole has the advantages of efficient traveling time especially for hikers. The device also has no current competitors and hence a good opportunity to develop Triptole. It was based on online survey, where 89.81% respondents show interest in Triptole.

As for their plans, Fadillah said that she and her friends want to focus on academic and organizational activities first. Nevertheless, she hopes Triptole will be mass produced and always be improved. Fadillah and her friends will apply for Triptole’s patent and conduct partnership with investors or outdoor adventure companies. The cooperation is expected to tackle Triptole’s funding and marketing problems, as those are the hurdles faced in initial business development. “We want a cooperation with third party in funding and marketing, but we still focus on other things first,” said Fadillah.

Reporter: Nabila Nurul Maghfirah (Regional and City Planning 2015)