Founder Series: Windy Natriavi, CPO and Co-Founder of AwanTunai
Since November 2021, OCBC NISP Ventura has started a Founders Series for our monthly newsletter. The Series will feature interviews with co-founder of startups in our portfolio.
AwanTunai is a supply chain business solution and transaction-based financing for Indonesian MSMEs. AwanTunai’s vision is to bring prosperity to Indonesia’s mass unbanked micro-SME sector, which employs 90% of the workforce. AwanTunai has 2,116 active borrowers and IDR 104 billion total outstanding loan. Here’s the story of Windy Natriavi, CPO & Co-Founder of AwanTunai, as an inspiring woman founder.
Can you tell us about your experience building AwanTunai in the early years, especially as a woman founder?
Building AwanTunai in the early years took a lot of learning and discovery to develop a product for a market that a lot of the Founding team and I weren't the end-user back then. Building products in this situation was particularly challenging and required a massive dose of empathy, and this was where my experience as a woman came into play. Did you know that women make the best product managers? ;)
By leveraging empathy, I was able to bring economic value through the following 3 points:
Being a trusted advisor to our suppliers and merchants and driving the Product team to conduct weekly product discovery and research into our suppliers and merchants, 60% of whom has a key women employee (or COO as I’d like to call them ;)).
Advocating for and ensuring a healthy ratio of women leadership at senior management levels to be at least 30% by building mentorship and support programs for women in the company.
Championing the concept of psychological safety within the team which plays an essential part in our successful pivot to our current SME positioning.
What do you think makes AwanTunai grow exponentially since 2017 although the industry competition is getting tighter by time?
AwanTunai’s exponential growth is due to our strategy of developing networks and putting our suppliers and merchants as partners instead of competitors. We actively pursue a careful strategy of not competing (i.e., selling goods to merchants), which has resulted in the trust of suppliers nationwide. As such, we can then grow by tapping into our suppliers' networks instead of individual onboarding merchants.
How does AwanTunai position itself against new players?
Competition is inevitable, but the market itself still has many problems, hence opportunities and bets to play. The stake we are making is that building software products that empower instead of eliminating and getting suppliers and merchants to use those as a means of growing their profits exponentially, will stand the test of time and more competition to come. AwanTunai is well positioned, with its suite of end-to-end software and technology capabilities, to reap and, more importantly, grow a large share of the market.
What is the current industry challenge AwanTunai is trying to tackle?
The SME industry in Indonesia makes up 60% of our workforce, yet it only contributes to 40% of our national GDP. Interpreting the numbers means a limit to how far crude manpower can go, and it takes technology to propel the industry output and contribution further. We also face this challenge in our current FMCG industry, where adoption of technology and mindset results in a lack of digitalization, hindering the industry's overall growth.
What is AwanTunai’s plan for 2022?
AwanTunai takes a distinct approach to solve the challenges mentioned above, and we are excited to develop products that will increase motivation by launching features that improve the ability of our suppliers and merchants to earn revenue and reduce costs through our systems. Some of those exciting features are MicroTempo, a card-based financing product for ultra-micro merchants to transact without the necessity of a smartphone. I'm also particularly excited about our Basket Recommendation, a proprietary AI-based feature enabling our merchants to get suggestions on critical products to buy that will also come with a buy-back guarantee if they cannot sell those products. I can't wait for 2022!