Universitas Brawijaya (UB) students won the business idea competition in Pertamina Muda (Pertamuda) Seed and Scale 2021 students, and received a coaching fund award of Rp. 100 million from PT Pertamina (Persero). This victory was announced at the First Top 20 Final event which was held on Wednesday (1/9/2021). This achievement was successfully achieved because the business idea they carrying was considered to contain innovation and sustainable values, namely Chick-in.
The chick-in, which was built by Tubagus Syailendra (International Relations, FISIP) as CEO, Ashab Alkafi (Agro-ecotechnology, FP) as Chairman, and Ahmad Syaifullah (Information System FILKOM) as Chief Technology Officer, is an agriculture startup with IoT solutions to overcome chicken farming management to help farmers in increasing their income through climate control and energy meters.
“By the technology, farmers can reduce operating costs or expenses, and can increase income from converting feed into meat that we save,” explained the CEO of Chick-in, Tubagus Syailendra.
In addition, Chick-in also supplies frozen chicken meat for restaurants, hotels, processing factories, government, and social assistance. “Currently, with IoT technology and software that we have created, we have helped 1 million chicken breeders spread across Klaten, Central Java, and we have supplied chicken meat to 25 industries, including Bensu, TaniHub, Sayurbox, and KFC for the future plan,” said Tubagus.
His participation in the event provided many benefits for the progress of his business. “We met amazing mentors, they gave us very constructive feedback, so we could know what the blind spots or weaknesses of our products, so we could improve even better,” he said.
The student of 2016 batch said that his success in this event cannot be separated from the role of UB Entrepreneurial Innovation and Incubator Agency (BIIW). “So far BIIW has played a role Chick-in progress so that we can finalize business ideas with BIIW mentoring and funding programs that facilitate us to make our ideas real. We are also grateful to be able to bring UB’s good name in our final year of study,” he said.
This competition was participated by 2,025 teams from universities throughout Indonesia. With a gradual selection held since June 2021, 50 teams were screened to take part in the offline Demoday in Bali. Here, they are judged directly by mentors, practitioners, and business experts, until they are filtered into the top 20, and three winners are determined, namely UB, Universitas Indonesia and Universitas Airlangga.
Met separately, the President Director of BIIW-UB, Dr. Setyono Yudo Tyasmoro, MS expressed his happiness on the victory of UB entrepreneur in this national competition. “We are proud, because the coaching that has been carried out by BIIW can lead UB entrepreneurial students to win this national level competition, standing with two other big universities,” he said.
Yudo added, BIIW is committed to continue encouraging the emergence of innovation and entrepreneurship in UB to support the improvement of the national economy. Before Chick-in, there were 9 BIIW assisted startups that successfully get funding from Indonesian Innovation Startup Program held by the Ministry of Research and Technology/National Research and Innovation Agency (RISTEK-BRIN).
“We hope that BIIW-UB can be more advanced and get support for the expansion of space and completeness of infrastructure in the future, so that it can better support the entrepreneurial incubator process for UB students, and UB young entrepreneurs can be more take part at the national level,” concluded the lecturer of the Faculty of Agriculture. [Irene/ Humas UB/ Trans. Iir]
