Tokopedia Gets 800 Thousand New MSME Partners

An e-commerce company, Tokopedia, hooked up 800 thousand new Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) partners during the corona pandemic, bringing the total to more than nine million. This national unicorn claims, its partner transactions can increase up to nine times.

Tokopedia CEO William Tanuwidjaja said the additional partners were counted since the national movement related to local products last May. “We see that online transactions have increased nine times,” he said in a virtual seminar entitled “Proud to be Made in Indonesia #SemuaAdaDisini”, Monday (26/10).

Tokopedia co-founder & CEO William Tanuwijaya said that one of the biggest problems faced by MSMEs when selling in e-commerce is the low purchasing power of the public which can lead to decreased sales.

“In fact, there is a lot of demand, but people’s purchasing power in the market is low,” he said during a discussion on the Proud Webinar Made in Indonesia #SemuaAdaDisini which was broadcast virtually, Monday (26/10/2020).

People’s Purchasing Demand Decreased Since Pandemic

According to him, the low purchasing power in the market is also caused by several factors, such as the national economy is not optimistic, which makes people more likely to think about saving rather than spending.

“This online service is not magic. Business does not automatically explode, “he said. MSMEs need to improve product quality in order to compete. In addition, people’s purchasing power has not yet recovered during the Covid-19 pandemic.” People prefer to hold on to shopping first, “said William.

Therefore, Tokopedia relies on various promotional strategies to attract consumers. Promotional programs such as free shipping (postage), cashback (cashback) to monthly discounts on Indonesian Shopping Time (WIB).

“That educates the public to try or be interested. What online shopping is like. In the end, there are benefits for the nine million Tokopedia UMKM partners,” he said. The same thing was conveyed by the Expert Staff for Digital Transformation, Creativity, and Human Resources of the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs Mira Tayyiba.

William said that during this pandemic there were several categories of high demand. This happened because people were forced to stay at home to minimize the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“During this pandemic, people prefer to stay at home. Even if they do sports at home, this is what makes the demand for sports products on Tokopedia increase significantly,” he said. In fact, he continued, there is one local bicycle brand, namely the Element Bike, which received a MURI Record for the category of selling folding bikes in under 1 minute.

“When they launched a new bicycle design on Tokopedia, 200 units were sold within 40 seconds, so they get a MURI record,” he said.

The Government also Supports the MSME Business through Sharing Programs

On the one hand, the government focuses on supporting the MSME business through several programs. One of them is launching the defense procurement application and diverting 20% ​​of state expenditure for procurement of goods to MSMEs.

Then, create a Digital Market (PaDi) program. The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) targets the sales of MSME products to reach IDR 18.52 trillion. The government also launched the UMKM Digital Credit program (DigiKU) last July (17/7).

Through this program, the Association of State-Owned Banks (Himbara) disbursed loans of IDR 4.2 trillion to one million MSMEs. Loans are only given to MSMEs who join the digital platform. This policy is expected to encourage business actors to sell online.

All of this is done to encourage more MSMEs to enter the digital ecosystem. “Our big goal is to expand the capacity of e-commerce. Furthermore, it leads to global competitiveness,” said Mira. Since last May, there are at least 2.7 million MSMEs that have digitized their business.

The number exceeds the target of two million business actors. The number of MSMEs penetrating the digital ecosystem exceeds the target of 10 million to nearly 11 million. Even so, the number is around 16% compared to the total MSME players in Indonesia.