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Mobile bandwidth new 'favorable winds' for IORA business
Instead of a travel time of months 2,000 years ago, deals would happen in real time using the smartphone that most of us now have. Bali Yatra would be celebrated all year round, not only dependent on favorable winds
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Illustration of fin-tech. (Shutterstock/File)
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s a speaker at Jakarta's Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Business Summit, I remembered Bali Yatra– literally Journey to Bali, an annual celebration in India's east coast state of Odisha on November's Full Moon day or Karthik Poornima.
Everyone floats toy boats made of banana stem or paper, places a diya or oil lamp on the toy boat and keeps awake till sunrise. This civilizational memory dates back over 2,000 years, to the annual launch of a flotilla of trading boats to Indonesia, helped by favorable winds. In 100 BCE, it took two months for the journey to Sumatra across the Indian Ocean and much trade and commerce took place both ways. This trade was by SMEs -- small and medium businesses, not multinational corporations.
In 2017, we need to rediscover the ancient ties of trade between our countries. India with its long coastline had sadly become “ocean-locked” during European control of the Indian Ocean, as detailed in Sanjeev Sanyal's book, The Ocean of Churn. Now all 21 countries connected by the Indian Ocean are ramping up their trade of goods, services and people.
IORA's successful Leaders' Summit in Jakarta would help increase this. President Joko“Jokowi” Widodo mentioned that the region had a population of 2.7 billion with impressive economic growth rates. He called upon the business community to democratize access and launch mobile phone based online marketplaces and payment mechanisms among IORA countries.
Jokowi was right in saying that SMEs accounted for over 50 percent of GDP and over 70 percent of employment in IORA countries.
In our panel discussion, we proposed exactly such a mobile app, to enable businesses across IORA countries to integrate into respective supply chains. Learning from co-panelist Nadiem Makarim's Go-Jek success, we would create a mobile app for businesses across IORA countries. Individual businesses would put up their profile, with their national chamber of commerce only verifying their membership status.
Thereafter, just like Facebook “likes” or Linkedin or TripAdvisor reviews/recommendations, each business would seek reviews and ratings from customers within IORA countries. This would create a virtuous cycle of good businesses becoming highly rated, increasing trust and more cash flow coming their way.
