Women Have an Important Role in Advancing Digital-Based MSMEs

Given the development towards digital transformation in the field of MSMEs, e-commerce solution service providers, Sirclo assesses women as having an important role.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) in 2018, the number of MSMEs managed by women reached 64.5 percent, or the equivalent of 37 million business units of the total MSMEs in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, based on the Women Will report from Google, 40 percent of women aged 25-34 years in Indonesia prefer to start their own company rather than work in a company owned by someone else.

In addition, in research conducted by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Indonesia and Thailand have been named as contributing countries to the highest number of women entrepreneurs in Asia Pacific.

“If women’s participation is increased by 20 percent, it can be estimated that Indonesia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can increase significantly to IDR 26 thousand trillion in 2030,” as written in a statement, Wednesday (19/5/2021).

Increasingly sophisticated digital technology makes it easier for new pioneering women entrepreneurs to reach national and global markets at a fairly low cost.

Two women MSMEs who are starting their businesses in the current digital era are the Owner and Managing Director of Less for More, Josephine, and the owner of BWBYAZ, Astri Zakiyyah.

Both of them use Sirclo’s services to develop MSMEs in the fashion sector with consistent growth.

“Although currently there is a marketplace or social media platform, we believe that the presence of a website is very important to maintain customer trust and highlight a stronger brand identity,” said Josephine.

To monitor operations, Josephine relies on two features of the Sirclo Store, namely the website to manage online sales from the official shoplessformore.com website and the Marketplace to synchronize sales from Tokopedia and Shopee.

Optimize Sirclo Store Website Features

Meanwhile, Astri Zakiyyah uses the website features on the Sirclo Store to increase customer trust, brand credibility, and sales reach in order to attract customers from abroad.

The owner of BWBYAZ, who started his business by dividing his time with lectures, admitted that he was facilitated by services from Sirclo.

“That way, we can focus on taking care of other more strategic aspects, such as marketing planning or the direction of business development,” he said. For your information, Sirclo provides various services, namely Sirclo Store, Sirclo Commerce, and Icube.

“Of the 5 most successful brands in Sirclo Store today, we found 3 of them are owned by women. This is an honor for us, where we see Indonesian women can spearhead the progress of digital-based MSMEs,” concluded CEO Brian Marshal.

Sirclo has supported more than 100,000 brands to develop their business online. This figure includes brands from the MSME to enterprise-scale such as Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, L’Oréal, and Levi’s.

Sirclo Raises Funding from Several Investors

Startup provider of various e-commerce services, Sirclo, raised US$ 45 million (around IDR 638 billion) in a Series B3 funding round led by Sinar Mas Digital Ventures (SMDV) with participation from East Ventures.

The CEO of Sirclo, Brian Marshal, said that the investment obtained by his company was part of the Orami parenting platform acquisition agreement which took place in early April 2021. Orami is a portfolio of East Ventures and SMDV.

Part of this corporate action agreement also involved Orami’s CEO, Ferry Tenka, who was positioned as Sirclo’s Chief Marketing Office and President Orami Hendrawan Kartika as Chief Financial Officer.

The two Orami officials acquired 0.7 percent of Sirclo’s shares. The news for Series B3 funding comes from data from VentureCap Insights, which estimates that Sirclo’s current valuation is US$ 116 million (around IDR 1.6 trillion).

Prior to securing funding from SMDV and East Ventures, Sirclo obtained its final funding of US$ 6 million (around IDR 85 billion) from OCBC NISP Ventura, East Ventures, Skystar Capital, and Sinar Mas Land.