Nurbaya Initiative

The idea of Nurbaya Initiative is to create a digital ecosystem for Indonesian SME where their products can be sold online without expecting the SME themselves to understand the inner working of the Internet. According to Indonesian Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately 52 million micro businesses employing over 96 million people from the 108 million total workforces in the nation. These micro businesses are actually contributing approximately USD350 billion of economic activity amounting to 55.6% of the total GDP of the country. Most of these economic activities are conducted off line and not in the Internet. On the other hand, Deloitte in their December 2011 study discovered that Internet-related activities in Indonesia have produced 1.6% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) or Rp 116 trillion. This is larger than liquefied natural gas at 1.45% and larger than electronic and electrical equipment exports at 1.51%. This is more than three times larger than wood and wood related manufacturing. Furthermore, these Internet users are actively searching and looking for products or services created by these micro businesses. For example, upon analyzing a small sample of 7,032 product names currently produced by SME in Indonesia, it is discovered they were actually searched on Google.com, Bing.com and Yahoo.com in Indonesia 1.2 billion times within one year period. Yet, many of these products are not available to be sold online creating a huge vacuum that can be supplied by the SME, if they are connected into an online ecosystem. This concept paper describes in detail the data that produce one irrefutable conclusion; the creation a digital ecosystem for SME products to be sold online is the only logical steps to elevate Indonesian SME to the next level creating a sustainable economic environment felt bu those on the bottom of the pyramid. This concept paper also details the likely job impact produce by this ecosystem.