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ingapore-based lender DBS Indonesia has forged a cooperation with local online shopping portal bukalapak.com to accommodate social entrepreneurs in marketing and selling their products online, as part of the bank'€™s corporate social responsibility (CSR) program.

The online bazaar, dubbed '€œBeli dan Peduli'€ (Buy and Care), embraces entrepreneurs who use environmentally friendly materials and employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as former lepers, prisoners, drug users, street children, poor farmers and women, from various regions in Indonesia.

'€œWe would like to raise market awareness of the existence of such entrepreneurs, whose products don'€™t only help solve social problems but also contribute to the growth of the domestic economy,'€ DBS Indonesia chief operating officer Rudy Tandjung said during a press briefing in South Jakarta on Tuesday.

The 11 businesses taking part are Bagoes bags, Hey Startic bags, Nalacity Muslim head covers, Sahawood eyewear, Toraja Melo fashion apparel, Agri Socio snacks and drinks, Burgreens organic food, Kakoa chocolate, Du'€™Anyam souvenirs, Nara Kreatif stationery and Wangsa Jati body care.

The bank will promote the program from Oct. 20 to Nov. 20, while the products will also continue to be sold on bukalapak.com afterward.

Rudy said that helping social entrepreneurs had been the bank'€™s CSR focus since 2013. DBS has provided 17 such enterprises with training and access to potential investors this year, as well as giving grants to the top performers.

As for DBS'€™ business, its customers are largely corporate, making up 90 percent of the bank'€™s clients in total. It plans to target more consumers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in five to 10 years from now, according to Rudy.

Bukalapak.com, on the other hand, has envisioned developing local SMEs since its establishment five years ago.
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The online bazaar [...] embraces entrepreneurs who use environmentally friendly materials and employ people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It now hosts 500,000 SMEs, with around Rp 2.7 trillion (US$198.5 million) in transactions from January to September this year, a leap from less than Rp 1 trillion in the same period last year thanks to a surge in smartphone users, said its CEO, Achmad Zaky.

Zaky said 40 percent of the transactions came from sales of gadgets and apparel. Next year, the company targets Rp 5 trillion in total transactions.

According to the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII), Indonesia had 88.1 million Internet users in 2014, or 39.4 percent of the total population. Of the figure, 85 percent of users accessed the Internet through a smartphone. In 2013, 71.9 million people used the Internet, 65 percent of them using smartphones.

Within the next two years, Internet penetration and smartphone users nationwide are forecast to hit 55 percent and 41 percent, respectively.

Amid mushrooming online marketplaces, such as Mataharimall, Lazada and Blibli, Zaky said that bukalapak.com chose to strengthen its selling point by improving services and product quality.

'€œWe want sustainable business growth with sustainable promotional strategy. We don'€™t play with aggressive discounts,'€ Zaky said, adding that the company also built good relations with its sellers by providing business training.

The University of Indonesia'€™s SME Center senior associate Dewi Meisari Haryanti said less than 2 percent of the country'€™s 58 million SMEs earned over Rp 300 million a year, so there was still a vast need to train and develop more entrepreneurs. (rbk)