Tonggak.id helps validate data to spur business initiatives

• Collaboration between the government, KIBAR, and Gadjah Mada University
• A platform that allows users to access, post, analyse, and validate data

THE Indonesian government and KIBAR’s initiative to level up the digital economy through the “National Movement of 1,000 Digital Startups” is well on its way.

After running across 10 cities in Indonesia for one year, there are now a total of 25,944 young entrepreneurs who want to be pioneers in the startup ecosystem.

However, most of them have difficulties in identifying the solutions they can offer to their community and country.

Based on an internal survey among startup founders under the National Movement of 1,000 Digital startups, it is clear that entrepreneurs struggle to decide on businesses that work best in their area due to a limited access to resources and experts.

In order to cope with this challenge, the Indonesian government through its SatuData initiative, Gadjah Mada University, and KIBAR have come together to form Tonggak.id, a platform to collect and validate data that shows the problems faced by any given community.

Through Tonggak.id, entrepreneu will receive better insight for their business models in order to provide solutions based on accurate data.

“This platform aims to increase the potential for an entrepreneur to start a business. But as the potential grows bigger, more problems will come out and more solutions will be needed. We are here to provide accurate data to support the solutions,” said Tonggak.id co-founder Octa Ramayana during a press conference recently.

Tonggak.id also eases access and interprets data on government website Data.go.id as well as any other resource by aggregating them with the help of researchers who analyse the data.

The platform will validate not only data and statistics, but also research papers by university students.

“These research papers and data may be stored and unused in the library. Why don’t we let the community access this data so it will give entrepreneurs a better idea of the solutions needed,” he adds.

A user management team from Tonggak.id will monitor user account activities while moderators from Tonggak, the government and Gadjah Mada University will approve or reject posts from the community as well as users who are allowed to access and post data on the platform.

Octa says that the difficulty in collecting data and finding the right partners to provide that data were the main challenges in starting this platform. He also does not get any revenue from this platform.

“We are still testing this platform in the community, that’s why we only aim for social purposes.”

The idea was born after Octa failed in his own startup journey. Now, he is also KIBAR head of incubator and together with KIBAR’s chief executive Yansen Kamto, initiated this platform.

He wants Tonggak.id to be able to collect sources of data as the first step. Tonggak.id focuses on six main categories of data and research papers, namely, maritime, education, health, culture, logistics, and food security.

From the government’s point of view, One Data Indonesia coordinator and executive staff of deputy at Executive Office of the President Robertus Theodore says that collaborating with Tonggak.id will help to optimise the usage of government data.

“I believe that the value of data will rise if it can be useful to users or even the government in implementing data-driven decision making.

“We do not want to compile all existing data and leave it there. We want to use it, especially for the startup community,” he explains.

Gadjah Mada University head of business development Eddy Junarsin explains that data determines the quality of research.

“Data is a main component in research that offers solutions for society. It has to be accurate and portray what is currently happening,” he concludes.

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