Behind Mitra Bukalapak’s Success in Empowering Indonesia’s Economic Biggest Drivers
Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are widely known as the main drivers of the Indonesian economy, contributing significantly to the country’s gross domestic product. These include warungs or Indonesia’s mom-and-pop stores, where transactions occur daily between warung owners and customers coming from all backgrounds. Despite carrying huge potential, a lot of time warungs face challenges, such as limited funding, inadequate product competitiveness, immature marketing strategies, and lack of tech literacy, which are things that hold them back from growing from time to time.
Optimizing one thing that Bukalapak knows best, that is technology, we established Mitra Bukalapak, an online-to-offline (O2O) platform designed to help warungs that had been left out of digitalization. Starting from 2.870 users in 2017, Mitra Bukalapak app is now being utilized by 15.2 million warung owners and other small enterprises in more than 200 cities in Indonesia to run their business. The app allows the users to order stock of goods, sell virtual products, provide digital payments, accept good delivery requests, and many other things they perhaps never dreamed of capable of.
A recent research by Nielsen suggests that Mitra Bukalapak is leading digital penetration into warungs and phone credit kiosks in Indonesia by 56%. We are very delighted to hear that this extensive coverage has also brought a positive impact towards our Mitras. On average, after joining Mitra Bukalapak, they are able to increase their income by almost 3 times.
All this also translates to Mitra Bukalapak’s business performance. In Q3 2022, Mitra Bukalapak was shown to contribute 48% of Bukalapak’s Total Processing Value (TPV).
However, we can’t and won’t stop here. We built Mitra Bukalapak not only as a tool for growth, but also an opportunity for small business owners to level up. Therefore, our goal is not merely enabling them to achieve financial success. We want them to have a growth mindset as entrepreneurs. We want to push them to keep thinking of what’s next.
Growing by Learning
As digital and financial literacies are among the keys to business growth, in 2021 we set up Perpustakaan Juwara, a feature on Mitra Bukalapak that serves as a virtual learning space for all Juwara community members. The digital library contains more than 200 learning materials consisting of articles, booklets, and comics on small business development tips and strategies.
To our delight, the Mitras don’t take Perpustakaan Juwara for granted. As everything in the library is accessible 24/7, they use their free time to read about basic business knowledge and tips on optimizing features on Mitra Bukalapak app. Each month, we see almost 13.000 visits to the library. Such a great thing to know!
This is also what fuels us to do more for our Mitras. We continuously build a comprehensive learning ecosystem for them and this includes Juwara community. The community, which consists of more than 120,000 members from all over the country, was formed to encourage our Mitras to network and learn from fellow warung owners. Through regular online and offline gatherings, we invite them to learn about financial and business management from the experts and listen to their peers’ success stories, as we learned that these were what moved them the most.
Terrific Tales of Warungs
To me — and I believe I share this view with anyone else in my team — the most rewarding thing from taking part in warung empowerment is hearing amazing stories from our Mitras. One of my personal favorites is the story of Siti Khasanah, popularly known as Juragan Aan, from Cikarang.
She started her warung business at her garage, selling a limited number of products. Upon using Mitra Bukalapak in 2018, Juragan Aan has been able to not only sell a bigger variety of groceries, but also many types of virtual products. The space of her warung has grown bigger and looks a lot like modern retailers. This shift has apparently driven her to think more like a modern retail business owner. She started to think of ways to retain her loyal customers. So, she got creative.
“I’ve always wanted to give back to my customers and the people around me, who have been helping me with my business. One time during Ramadhan, I had an idea of giving them gifts and money, which is something very common during the Holy month. Since then, every year on Ramadhan I would gift presents and ‘holiday money’, or THR as we call it, to my loyal customers and people living in my neighborhood,” she said.
“However, I don’t set aside a budget out of my warung’s revenue. I used the money I get from selling used cardboard boxes and winning Mitra Bukalapak quizzes competitions,” she said.
Our Mitras’ endless spirit of learning to become better entrepreneurs everyday really spurs our passion in creating more impact to more warungs and small business alike. The Mitras always think of what’s next, so should we. I’m so excited to be part of more innovative approaches taken by Mitra Bukalapak to empower our economic drivers!
