Jakarta, 1 May 2022 -- The large number of Indonesian diaspora distributions overseas opens up a large global market potential for Indonesian MSME businesses and products. One of them is the coffee shop, Kopi Kalyan, located in Tokyo prefecture, Japan. The coffee shop business is owned by a diaspora of Indonesian entrepreneurs based in Tokyo, Japan, Kenny Erawan Tjahyadi. According to Kenny, product localization is a very important strategy to introduce Indonesian coffee.
It's like adjusting or adapting the design, taste, and product packaging to suit the Japanese market. "We also saw this opportunity in this pandemic because many Japanese trading companies had just started selling or stopped selling coffee. So there we saw an opportunity to enter into this market, we are trying to start expanding into retail or b2b and so on," he explained.
In developing his business, Kenny received support of various parties, such as Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Trade, who provided input and support. Kenny also received support from the collaboration between the Indonesian Embassy and BNI in supporting coffee exports.
Kenny said that the synergy between the government and BNI was carried out, such as holding various events for business matching and various meet and greet events. From there, he can get in touch directly with the diaspora in Tokyo, and obtain input on how to run a business.
He conveyed that previously the only Indonesian coffees known in Tokyo were Mandailing and Toraja. However, after various events were held, Tokyo residents began to know more about other Indonesian coffees.
Besides Kenny, there is also Nuraini Widyaningsih. One of the entrepreneur diaspora in Busan, South Korea has succeeded in developing an Indonesian culinary business. She explained that in order for culinary products to be accepted by the tongue of South Korean people, adjustments were needed without reducing the taste of the food. "Spices in Korea are rarely used," she stressed.
In addition to South Korean people, Nuraini revealed, there were foreign nationals who had stopped by her business place, such as foreigners from the United States, Russia, and Germany. According to Nuraini, foreigners get information from the internet. "They know Indonesia with fried rice. They want to know what fried rice is like. There are also those who have gone on tours to Bali and they miss Indonesian cuisine and have also tried it here," she concluded.
Meanwhile, the Entrepreneur Diaspora in Hong Kong, Sarinah said, the country's population is not too large and has a lot of Indonesian Migrant Workers. This also gives birth to various opportunities that can be worked on. Sarinah detailed that there are still many products that had not paid attention to this, so Sarinah had to do research and also repackage. Fortunately, BNI said she was quite helpful in expanding Sarinah's business so far.
"Remittance cooperation financing and business matching really helps us, not to mention finding Indonesian products is easier. So far, many have succeeded in doing this, so we can increase the types of products and distribute them," said Sarinah.
BNI completes the ecosystem for diaspora, namely BNI XPora which supports MSMEs to penetrate the export market. Then for Indonesian migrant workers, BNI also cooperates with manpower to make it affordable.
BNI Xpora Becomes a Diaspora Engine
Meanwhile, BNI Treasury & International Director Henry Panjaitan revealed that BNI Xpora services will be an engine to support diaspora. BNI Xpora is considered to be an integrated solution to encourage MSME business capacity and capability through education, assistance and business consultation. "We are developing IT to support it, because export-import activities must have IT capacity," he explained in the BNI Global Diaspora Week Webinar with CNBC Indonesia, Wednesday (27/4/2022).
He said the Xpora program could provide opportunities for MSMEs overseas. For this reason, BNI will develop customers so that they can become exporters by developing their quality. To support this, he said, BNI would approach exporting companies, trading houses, local Chamber of Commerce and Industry and look for diaspora who are already doing business abroad, either in restaurants, trading companies, or supermarkets
"This really helps MSMEs to compete in the global market. And the diaspora community is like two sides of a coin, complementing each other," he explained.
For your information, BNI is one of the banks that has a strong overseas network, with a presence in 6 countries. The large number of diaspora from Indonesia is expected to contribute greatly to the economy, both from financial activities, investment, to trade. Unfortunately, this great potential has not been fully exploited due to the absence of diaspora mapping and limited financial services from Indonesian banks.
Secretary of the Ministry of SOEs, Susyanto, said, "The challenges of the presence of Indonesian banks overseas can be overcome by developing digital transactions that can overcome distance problems. "The distribution of the diaspora is very wide and our national banks are limited operating abroad. Himbara Banks overseas are generally located in financial centers, there are still none in Africa, for example. This is what is needed," said Susyanto.
In the long term, to increase the contribution of the diaspora to the economy, mapping must be carried out. In addition, the business development of the diaspora is also a concern of the government so that later they can become agents of promotion of Indonesian products abroad. "So it's not just numbers, but how diaspora goes from small to medium and large. If necessary, they can become big enough business people in other countries," said Susyanto.