Bandung, itb.ac.id -- Koperasi Kesejahteraan Mahasiswa (Kokesma) Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) has successfuly held the ITB Cooperative Day 2020 seminar with a theme titled “Revolution 4.0: What to Prepare for the Cooperative Entrepreneur”. The event was held at Aula Barat ITB on Saturday, February 29th, 2020. The keynote speaker for this seminar was the Deputy for Institutional Affairs of the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Rully Nuryanto, SE., M.Si.

The Director of Student Affairs for ITB, Dr. G. Prasetyo Adhitama, hoped that this event would help students gain more knowledge about cooperatives since the values involved in cooperatives are well aligned with Indonesian culture, which are teamwork and cooperation. “We also hope that this event would give students practical experiences related to cooperatives. This goal is also well aligned with the regulations from the Ministry of Education and Culture, in which non-curricular activities in higher education institutions are directed towards leadership, network, and ethics” he said.

ITB Cooperative Day 2020 was opened by Prof. Dr. Ing. Ir. Widjaja Martokusumo, the Institution Secretary of Institut Teknologi Bandung. He said that the seminar brought several interesting speakers that can answer questions related to what cooperatives are, the importance of cooperatives, and improvements that can be made to cooperatives.

In ITB, Kokesma ITB is one of the organizations in which ITB students can learn about entrepreneurship, improve their soft skills, and gain new experiences related to running an organization. These things play an important role nowadays, especially with the advancements in this new era and new startups popping up everywhere. Therefore, these factors are some of the challenges that students need to tackle in order to be a successful entrepreneur.

The Deputy for Institutional Affairs of the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, Rully Nuryanto, SE., M.Sc., also said that, the interest in becoming an entrepreneur is growing than ever before. One of the critical factors behind this development is the development of information technology. This factor, however, has caused several impacts, such as reducing the amount of conventional businesses and encouraging new business fields to emerge, such as Youtubers, baristas, start-ups, and celebgrams. As an example, he said that a Youtuber can get a big income since their occupation requires them to be creative and innovative in creating new contents for their followers. This also applies to entrepreneurs, since the key factor in becoming a successful entrepreneur is being innovative in developing new products.

He also added that being an entrepreneur nowadays requires collaboration. Collaboration itself is important because businesses are unable to run on its own and need to collaborate with other entities or companies in the same business field. “Synergy is really relevant in today’s era and well aligned with the values attached to cooperatives, which are teamwork and cooperation” he said.

Aside from that, many people are still puzzled regarding the purpose of cooperatives. Rully explained that purpose of cooperatives is to create a strong, healthy, independent, and resilient business. A strong business should have a solid institutional base, a healthy business, able to solve internal problems and make decisions independently, and be resilient in facing the ever-changing competition and business landscape. “Being a part of a cooperative can also be the same as being the owner of a business, which will be run together with other members. Through that, we would then be able to cooperate with other members in developing important skills. From the non economical side, joining a cooperative would help us learn to be democratic, since a cooperative is based on the principles of joint ownership and fair profit sharing” he revealed.

Rully also added that the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) strongly supports the development of cooperatives in the campus. He also added that student-led cooperatives can also be a business incubator for students aside its main activity, which is running and developing business activities. However, the idea itself also has internal and external challenges. One of the challenges is the perspective that many people has regarding cooperatives, which they usually label as old-fashioned. Aside from those perspectives, the business model of cooperatives is thought to be obsolete and not really aligned with recent developments in businesses. “Another challenge that might hamper the development of cooperatives is that the student-led organization must do a reshuffle the members filling the positions in their organization each year. Therefore, rebranding for cooperatives in Indonesia is strongly needed and to do that, we need to collaborate with the Ministry of Education and Culture” he explained. 

Besides Rully Nuryanto, the event was attended by Jodi Salahuddin Akbar as the Manager of Public Policy and Government Relations for Syariah, NGO, and Universitiy Bukalapak, Anis Saadah as the CEO and Co-Founder of InnoCircle Initiative, Abdur Rohman, the owner of Sans.co Cafe and Co-working Space, and Candra Purnomo as the CMO of Nectico.

Translator : Verdyllan Agusta