Startups and the Government Adopt a Variety of Strategies to Revitalize the National Economy

By Adi Permana

Editor Adi Permana

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id-- On Saturday (25/9/2020), Iman Santosa, Director of Inter-Institutional Relations, Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (Kemenparekraf) / Agency for Tourism and Creative Economy (Baparekraf) of the Republic of Indonesia, and Anandita Danaatmadja, Vice President of Strategic Region and Head of Gojek Trade Partner Relations, attended a talkshow forum entitled "Revitalizing the Economy: Government and Startup" held by the Hult Prize ITB. They discussed their efforts and challenges in dealing with the pandemic, both from the government and startup standpoint.

At the beginning of the session, Anandita discussed the history of Gojek and its progress. Starting with Nadiem Makarim's proposal to digitize motorbike taxi drivers and ending with the Gofood innovation introduced in 2015. "Right now, Gojek is a Super App that solves a variety of challenges for the Indonesian people," he explained.

He also described Gojek's numerous strategies for assisting the community during the pandemic. Gojek took several strategic moves, including investing in product development, technology development, and product automation, as well as focusing more on the hygiene aspect of Gojek's services.

There are also numerous strategic programs in place to address the unemployment issue. One of them is expanding operations to Sumatra and Bone in order to gain new partners. Gojek created the Go Academy program, which provides intense training in the field of informatics to students for three months, and the Life in Gojek podcast, which provides millennials with an unique viewpoint on the working world.

Anandita also discussed some of Gojek's government collaborations to encourage community productivity throughout the pandemic. Several collaborative programs were carried out, including digital training collaboration with the government, Go Xcelerated, and the Muda Maju Bersama 1000 Startup program, a program to prepare 1000 startups with digital talents to open innovative ideas in the future, and the J3K Program, a program to assist the community and partners in maintaining health protocols at all times during a pandemic. Gojek partners are also provided with a variety of resources to help them complete the CHSE Certification, which was launched by the Kemenparekraf.

All of Anandita's explanations were interlaced with the perspectives and opinions of Iman Santosa, a bureaucratic player in the tourist and creative economy sectors. According to Iman, Kemenparekraf is attempting to revitalize the tourism and creative economies by implementing a variety of projects. Starting with tourism grant funds, online tourism Human Resources (HR) training programs, and CHSE (Cleanliness, Health, Safety, and Environmental Sustainability) Certification to improve the quality and provide guarantees for tourism business services, tourism destinations, and other tourism products.

"Indonesia had a decrease in tourism visits from 16 million to 4 million. In fact, the tourist sector used to generate 7.44 percent of GDP, making it the world's third largest contributor. However, it has now dropped to 6.36 percent, representing a loss of over one hundred trillion rupiah. Not only that, but this pandemic has also badly influence the tourism workers," Iman Santosa remarked.

Furthermore, Kemenparekraf has created collaboration initiatives for students and the younger generation. Some of these programs include the Generation Pesona Indonesia (GenPI) program, which serves as a community for marketing Indonesian tourism products, the Generation of Entrepreneurship Tourism, Baparekraf for Startup, internship programs, the AKATARA program, which provides film funding to young directors in Indonesia, and others.

Kemenparekraf believes that these projects will prepare a stronger future for Indonesia's development. Similarly, Gojek's start-up anticipates the rise of digital talents as a result of the different initiatives and collaborations they have built.

Reporter: Daffa Raditya Farandi (Entrepreneurship, 2023)
Translator: Sekar Dianwidi Bisowarno (Bioengineering, 2019)