Plans to Create A Unicorn, IPB University Business School Students Snatches First Place in EVEREST National Paper Competition 2019

Muhammad Azman, Nastasya Larasati from Business School of IPB University (SB IPB), batch 54, attained the first place of EVEREST National Paper Competition 2019 held by Department of Developmental Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of North Sumatra on April 11-15, 2018.

Muhammad Azman said that there are 15 teams which made it to the final round and IPB  University managed to get the first place. The second place was attained by a team from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the third place was attained by University of North Sumatra.

Azman elaborated that he and his team presented a paper about business similar to Unicorns, named belanjabareng.id. Belanjabareng.id is a business to business platform, which means the services or goods are transacted between one company to another. Belanjabareng.id functions as a bridge between suppliers with small medium enterprises (SME) with crowdfunding/group-buying system to help SME reach global market and support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “I choose this theme because it’s in line with my focus, which is Business School and I want to test how well our idea can be received by people. We hope that what we bring is in line with IPB University’s vision to produce sociotechnopreneur,” said Azman.

Azman said that belanjabareng.id is a marketplace platform. “The difference is that belanjabareng.id harnesses group-buying or collaboration system. Each SME can get the lowest price for its business necessities by buying them together until they reach the minimum order quantity designated by the supplier. Besides that, each supplier can officially be signed as a PT (Perseroan Terbatas), CV (Comanditaire Venootschap), UD (Usaha Dagang), etc. or only those which have a tax ID number (NPWP). The plan is that belanjabareng.id to be launched publicly but only for SME segmentation,” he explained.

In the future, this work, which is still under development, will keep on being used in competitions to test how far this work can be appreciated by outside party. “We hope belanjabareng.id can bring the good name of IPB University Business School in national or international competitions, and even to be a unicorn from IPB University,” he added. (Ard)