Telkom Aims to Facilitate SME Entrepreneurs by Launching Zapa

Wonderful news for Indonesian SME scenes. PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) looks to facilitate SME entrepreneurs with a mobile app which is really beneficial for their business development. This app, which is called Zapa, is Telkom’s attempt to perfect its last year’s Indonesia Digital Entrepreneur (IndiPreneur) program. This is in line with Telkom’s vision to push the use of technology by one million SME entrepreneurs by 2015.

In its official broadcast, Telkom claimed that 65,7% of SMEs under its management use smartphone to access various social media as well as interact with others. That is particularly the reason why Telkom then started developing Zapa.

“Basically, Telkom is well-prepared to support Jokowi-JK’s grand vision of facilitating Indonesian SMEs,” Muhammad Awaluddin, Telkom’s Director of Enterprise & Business Service, mentioned on Telkom’s official page.

Talking about Zapa, the app holds the So-Lo-Mo tagline as its slogan. “SO” means social media. This refers to the essential role that social media plays in SME’s promotion and communication activities. In this regard, users are required to have at least one social media account to be eligible as one of Zapa users. “LO” means local. Well, it refers to the fact that Zapa is indeed specially designed to meet the needs of local market and entrepreneurs. “MO” means mobile. This may refer to Telkom’s data which suggests that 95% browse items via their smartphones, and only 57% of them do really purchase the items.

“SME entrepreneurs may contact the nearest Telkom office by using the ‘Near Me’ feature. Then, they may get the information of ongoing and upcoming events so that they can get involved to and join those events. One thing for sure, SMEs will have their own community. This is one of benefits that we try to offer through this app,” Awaluddin added.

To make Zapa’s development runs smoother, Telkom partners with PT Infomedia Nusantara (one of Telkom Group members). While it is only available for Android users at the moment, Telkom suggested that it will also be available for other operating systems.

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