Sharia-Based Social Commerce Platform ‘Berkahi’ Officially Launched

Startup players are taking advantage of the momentum of the social commerce market revival in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. This time, the Berkahi platform is officially present in Indonesia to help MSME players increase the scale of their sharia-based business.

Berkahi enables business actors in the country to increase their income by marketing local and halal products through a reseller network. Berkahi’s target market is MSMEs, especially those in rural areas.

Berkahi was founded by Rowdy Fatha, Turina Farouk, and Andre Raditya Makmur. Berkahi’s development idea has been incubated since November 2021.

At the launch event, Co-founder & CEO Rowdy Fatha said the pandemic had a significant impact on the decline in the MSME business. In this situation, many business actors find it difficult to survive because many of them lack the ability and experience to build a business.

On the other hand, he considers sharia values ​​suitable to be applied in business. His party also wants to play a role in encouraging equitable distribution of financial and digital inclusion in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Berkahi also established a sharia advisory board to ensure Berkahi’s business activities are in accordance with sharia values.

“We want to go all out in helping the MSME community, not only in terms of business, but also promotion, operations, fulfillment, to logistics. We are even involved in educating MSMEs. God willing, this year we can present sharia funding [facilities] this year this,” said Rowdy.

The all-out form of support in question is, Berkahi supports business activities through a number of facilities, including promotional activities through Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), operations through fulfillment access (stockis) in 15 cities, and logistics partners.

Berkahi’s Business Size

Currently, Berkahi has 400 MSMEs connected to 20,000 resellers (referred to as Berkahi Partners). A number of Berkahi’s strategic partners include SiCepat, SiBeku, TanahAbang Community, Pijar, and XL Cooperatives, IWAPI, Haistar, Shoppingrutin.com, Shipdeo, and Pijar Community.

“We are strengthening our network in order to achieve our target of reaching 20 countries. Gradually, we will bring business actors who have been active on social media or selling offline to switch to this platform,” added Rowdy.

Meanwhile, Co-founder Turina Farouk targets to be able to reach 20 countries, have 1,000 MSMEs and 30,000 partners by the end of 2022. For this reason, his party will take advantage of the closest seasonal momentum, namely Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, to boost the target to be achieved this year.

Mitra Berkahi has access to thousands of halal products from local and overseas MSMEs, where packaging and delivery is carried out from the warehouse to the consumer directly. For SMEs, warehouse and operational facilities are free of charge.

Rowdy said Berkahi still relies on funding from investors’ angles to run its business. However, his party will also seek initial funding from Venture Capital (VC).

This funding will be used to expand Berkahi’s business scale with a target reach of up to 20 countries. One of them is a business loan facility through a channeling scheme which is targeted to launch in the second semester of 2022.

“Berkahi’s initial funding will be allocated to seed funding from VCs,” said Rowdy in his short message, Wednesday (30/3).

Social Commerce Market

Referring to Bain & Co data, the total GMV of e-commerce in Indonesia reached $47 billion in 2020, of which transactions from social commerce contributed $12 billion. This figure shows the potential for social commerce growth in the future.

According to a McKinsey report, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on changing people’s shopping behavior from offline to online.

In addition, social commerce offers job opportunities by empowering distribution networks or resellers. McKinsey projects the social commerce business to reach $25 billion by 2022.

Another factor is that people in rural areas still experience limited access to meet their daily needs that are obtained online, compared to those who live in urban areas.

The growing trend of social commerce is also in line with the increasing number of startup players entering this vertical for fashion, F&B, or daily necessities products.