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enture capitalists and key players in the digital industry are calling on anyone with great business ideas to come up, join the program and develop the ideas into lucrative businesses.

The Association of Indonesian Digital Entrepreneurs (ADEI), which was only established on Jan. 1, also called on workers who just got laid off to make use of the opportunity.

ADEI chairman Bari Arjon said the association would be able to take and develop ideas and eventually help turn the fate of a recently laid -off worker.

With a great business idea, he said, ADEI was able to link the individual with access to funding and education.

'€œWhen an individual gets fired, it should not be seen as the end of the world for him or her. There are many opportunities within the digital world to become successful,'€ Bari said recently.

'€œAt ADEI, we are able to help them out and turn their fates around. We want to encourage those with ideas to just do it. It isn'€™t easy, yeah, but investors will come to you when your idea is superb,'€ Bari added.

The presence of this association is particularly important for employees who get laid off from some companies, such as Ford Indonesia, Panasonic and Toshiba. They need to come up with ideas and show their passion to become digital entrepreneurs.

According to data from the Confederation of Indonesian Workers Unions (KSPI), about 8,600 people were laid off in January 2016 and 12 or 13 more factories will likely cut the numbers of their workers in the near future.

Samsung Indonesia'€™s vice president of research and development, Alfred Budiman, said a lot of undiscovered IT talents could be identified out of a situation like layoffs.

What was important, Alfred said, was the passion of the worker to pursue their digital ambitions.

'€œFinding the right tech workers in Indonesia is incredibly hard as many of them are outside of Indonesia. It makes sense though. The government doesn'€™t really dish out any money to help technological research and development. The individuals that have been laid off from their jobs can be educated and guided to become digital entrepreneurs,'€ he said.

ADEI itself has set a goal to foster up to 1 million digital entrepreneurs in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, ADEI member and digital entrepreneur Shinta Dhanuwardoyo added that about 627,000 new jobs were created in the mobile app sector alone in 2014, in a workforce that numbers up to 22,000, underlining the strength of the segment.

She said Indonesia should not settle or be satisfied with being named '€œone of the largest user bases for Facebook'€, saying that the satisfaction should be felt when Indonesia becomes a great producer of IT talent and content.

She added that in terms of the e-commerce roadmap being produced by the government, the 100 percent foreign ownership clause should be welcomed as it allowed a transfer and sharing of knowledge.

'€œThe crucial thing to pay attention to is to localize the digital payment system so that there is a degree of local control within that foreign ownership. That is the key to balance it all out,'€ she said.