Establishing a business is the dream of many students of SBM ITB. Building a successful and overgrow business takes hard work.
The Business Innovation Technology lecture on Thursday (26/1) shows an example of dreams and hard work. Teaching and learning activities are filled with sharing sessions by the president director, and finance director of the company founded by SBM ITB students and alums.
Founder and President Director of Hear Me, Athalia Mutiara Laksmi, shared her experience setting up a company. Athalia is an SBM ITB student class of 2020.
Hear Me is the first sign language translator application in Indonesia with a three-dimensional animation display and is directly handled by a sign language interpreter. This application has been downloaded by more than 10 thousand people and is used in various countries.
Hear Me is working with BRIN to expand the app’s features. They also work with the West Java Movement for the Welfare of the Deaf Indonesia (Gerkatin) to identify and approach the target market.
The beginning of the Hear Me business idea was when Athalia saw a deaf driver and brought her child to translate her sign language to the passengers. Hear Me then entered a competition to get funding so it could hire people who specialize in technology to build the app.
Then the lecture session was filled by Cody Kit, a company that teaches basic technology skills to children. Salsa and Ardi, SBM ITB 2020 students, as Cody Kit officials, explained their business.
Salsa and Ardi said Cody Kit emerged because of the view that learning coding is difficult and expensive. So they created a kind of game for children that sharpen computational thinking patterns.
The Cody Kit team seeks funding by participating in competitions, one of which is Pertamuda, which has a prize of Rp. 100 million. From a marketing point of view, they try to get into exhibitions. From here, they can meet Singapore’s Minister of Education. Now Cody Kit sales have reached thousands.
Finally, the lecture session was closed by Oki Earlivan, Founder of Edulab. Oki is the first batch of SBM ITB alumni. Not only setting up the company, but Oki is now the Finance Director of the Oxford Strategy Review Publisher.
Oki is currently involved in a nanotechnology innovation project by an engineering student at Oxford University, England. Campus asked him to develop this project and market it.
Oki also admits that he is creating a technology-based company that can record carbon emissions emitted by a person per day. He plans to introduce the concept of carbon tax regulations to the public. Seventy percent of the tax money will be used as public savings to buy electric cars and 30 percent to rebuild the forests.
“We are here after your graduation, but after graduation, SBM ITB students are prospective corporations themselves. We make corporations and companies not work become corporate enslaved people. Keep motivated,” said Oki in the guest lecture.