Don’t underestimate the impact of a simple idea
Well it started when we saw the call to participate in Funding Societies | Modalku’s (FSMK) virtual Hackathon. After years of joining FSMK, I think it’s time for me to participate. I was also keen to learn from other participants as cross-functional knowledge is beneficial to my role as Credit and Collection operations for Indonesia businesses.
Given various complexities and challenges we face in Indonesia, I contacted my fellow colleagues Mario, who is in charge of ID’s Partnership & Special Projects, tech engineer Kevin, and Chris, our Head of Design, to form a team. This would be the first time for Mario and Chris to participate in the Hackathon as well, while Kevin, given his job scope, has experience with the competition.
I would say that the most interesting part of this competition was in the ideation stage, we exchanged ideas and challenged each other to get the most out of it and we finally decided our main idea only 7 days before the competition! (previously we were thinking of withdrawing our participation because we weren’t feeling confident with this idea because we thought that it was too simple!)
So the title of our idea was “Audio & Visual Assistance for User Engagement in the Digital Onboarding Process”. This was inspired by the challenges that we face especially in Indonesia, where our potential customers were not interested in completing the digital loan submission process mainly due to lack of guidance and user fatigue. Based on our previous experience, the applicant does not seek help by navigating through the frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on our website, but prefers asking for help from a trusted person or someone who has experience and/or knowledge to complete the submission process. This is where our “AV Assistance” can help the applicant to solve any registration problems without navigating out to read through a page of instructions.. The fact that Indonesia was ranked on 72/77 for literacy, gave us confidence that this would help MSME applicants to get a more comfortable digital experience when applying for a loan with FSMK.
Right before the presentation, we rehearsed the demonstration of our prototype 8–10 times to ensure that the purpose of our idea is delivered succinctly to attract the interest of all judges and participants within the 2-minute time limit. During our presentation, we received positive feedback from the jury and participants even before we finished our presentation. We were flattered but still did not think that we would win this competition because other participants were very competitive, so we just thought that we made a good impression and have done well to our standard (first timer standard! hehe).
So when it was announced that we won first place, we were very happy and honoured, because our simple idea was recognised among many great ideas from across all participating teams within the company. Also, this is a first-time experience for the majority of the team members, making this achievement a very special one.
Now, the competition might be over but our mission to provide digital financing to MSMEs in Southeast Asia still remains unchanged. We are looking forward to bringing this idea to life very soon and making a positive impact to FSMK’s growth.
What we have built is very small, but it demonstrates understanding of our borrowers’ struggles and reduces friction in their application process. Small effort — huge impact!
