Pertamina: Improve Entrepreneurship Potential, Pertamina Start-Up Graduate Enters Forbes Under 30 List

Pertamina succeeded in bringing the champion of StartUp Pertamuda Seed & Scale held last year, Chickin Indonesia, into Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 entrepreneurs list in the Tech Enterprise category. Chickin is a startup that developed the Smart Farm Micro Climate Controller application as a solution for more productive and efficient chicken farming.

According to Forbes, Chickin Indonesia is the first poultry technology startup in Southeast Asia and had an impact on increasing income for hundreds of poultry farmers. Chickin has partnered with several companies in Central Java, such as Japfa, Charun Pokphand, CJ group, and 14 other slaughterhouses.

Ashab Alkahfi and Tubagus Syailendra alumnus of Universitas Brawijaya are the Founders of Chickin Indonesia. These two young people managed to outperform 50 teams from 23 universities by bringing their Smart Farm Micro Climate Controller application business idea as a solution for more productive and efficient chicken farming.

“The application we created is to help poultry farmers to increase their income up to 25%. This application that we initiated also allows farmers to sell chickens at a higher price,” Ashab said.

In addition, Chickin also presents a cage management technology, Chickin Smart Farm. Breeders are given the convenience of monitoring feeding needs, chicken growth, regulating the temperature and humidity of the cage, and recording all cage administration activities digitally.

Although many doubted their idea, Chickin did not give up. They adhere to the principle of growth hackers, breaking through here and there to get investors. Chickin’s efforts were not in vain when they received a capital injection of US$2.5 million from investors.

“This means that our startup can grow up to 2,000% in a year,” Ashab said while mentioning that the initial capital to build the startup was around IDR 7 million.

Chickin had the reasons to make the application. According to Ashab, currently, chicken is one of the commodities that is never absent in the market. The opportunity for this business is quite large. The harvested products often flood the market.

Ashab said, the imbalance between supply-demand so far is caused by the length of the supply chain from farmers to end-users. Because of that, Chickin developed a cage management technology to answer the needs that exist in the chicken farming sector. “We are trying to increase the productivity of chicken farmers and encourage people’s consumption needs for broilers. So we also help farmers sell their harvests,” he said.

Ashab is grateful for Chickin’s achievements. According to him, Chickin’s success cannot be separated from Pertamina’s assistance last year through Pertamuda Seed & Scale. “We thank all parties who have supported us, including Pertamina. Pertamina’s support is very impactful. From there, we can grow again and get investors. And that helps Chickin in our journey,” he explained.

According to Fajriyah Usman, Vice President of Corporate Communication of PT Pertamina (Persero), this activity aims to help the younger generation become a digital economy generation that can create jobs and boost economic growth through innovation-based knowledge gained through education.

“Pertamina, in an effort to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), especially in point 4, namely quality education for all Indonesian citizens and point 8, supports the achievement of economic growth from the entrepreneurial aspect, mobilizes Indonesia’s young generation to encourage the growth of startups from various campuses, which can further develop into unicorns. As said by the Ministry of SOEs, which encourages all SOEs to take part in giving birth to young Indonesian unicorns,” Fajriyah concluded.