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Kadin, Swedish messaging app to digitize fisheries
The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) has agreed to cooperate with Sweden-based telecommunications company Supertext to boost digitalization in the country’s fisheries industry
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span>The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) has agreed to cooperate with Sweden-based telecommunications company Supertext to boost digitalization in the country’s fisheries industry.
Under the cooperation agreement signed in Jakarta on Tuesday, the Swedish company will promote its massaging app to local fishermen to enable them to exchange and receive information about weather, fishing activities, safety and fish markets more effectively.
Kadin deputy chairman of maritime affairs and fisheries Yugi Prayanto said that Supertext would come in handy for fishermen, many of whom worked in remote locations, because it had wider connectivity than competitors such as Whatsapp, Line and Facebook Messenger.
“It’s like Whatsapp but with lower connectivity needs and at no [extra] cost,” he said after the signing of the agreement.
Whatsapp, Line and Facebook Messenger are Indonesia’s three most popular messenger apps, according to the latest annual Hootsuite-We Are Social report.
Supertext chief executive officer Martin Jacobson said at the signing that the app currently had 7.1 million Indonesian users, including 280,000 fishermen, mostly in Sulawesi.
The start-up has operated in Indonesia for seven years, during which the company has invested around US$10 million in building infrastructure.
Supertext offers wider connectivity than its competitors by tapping into 2G networks, which have wider reach than the 3G and 4G networks used by competitors, while also offering group chat and image sharing services, neither of which are offered by the SMS services of 2G networks.
“Most people in Indonesia use [the app] in offline mode. It’s a bit of an unusual case,” Jacobson noted.
Going forward, he said he dreamed of turning Supertext into the “WeChat of Indonesia” whereby it could earn revenue from offering services on the platform. The company currently works with local telecommunication providers such as Telkomsel, Indosat and XL to offer its 2G messaging service.
Kadin and Supertext began trials of the app with 100 tuna fishermen in Bali on Wednesday. Yugi said that, by the end of the three month trial, the two organizations expected to see fishermen use the app to sell their fish directly to end users.
“A fisherman can send a photo of his tuna straight to a buyer and close a transaction on the spot. No need for middlemen,” he said.
Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said the industry contributed Rp 62.24 trillion ($4.39 billion) to the country’s GDP in the second quarter of this year, up 6.2 percent from Rp 58.58 trillion in the same period last year.
The industry’s growth rate was higher the country’s GDP growth of 5.05 percent and the agriculture sector's growth of 5.33 percent in the same quarter.
Supertext is not the first startup to try to capitalize on Indonesia’s fishing industry. Fish feeding start-up eFishery, which launched in 2013, and peer-to-peer lender start-up DanaLaut, which launched in 2018, are also competing for a slice of the pie.
The government also began campaigning for digitization of the fishing industry in 2017, when the fisheries ministry and Communications and Information Ministry launched their joint Fishermen Go Online program, which trained fishermen in how to use internet technology.
