My name is Miftahul Falah, a graduate of Chemical Engineering at ITS. My father is a teacher and my mother is an entrepreneur. My mother’s family background is in trading. Therefore, my desire to go into business was born when I was a child. Another reason I want to go into business is to gain freedom of time and, more importantly, to be able to work according to my own wishes.
In my fourth year of university, I received a KSE scholarship. At that time, KSE offered a choice of specialisations. I chose entrepreneurship. I actively participated in the entrepreneurship programme, even after graduating from university.
The most memorable thing was that KSE provided full support to its scholarship recipients who wanted to venture into the business world. Even after graduating from university, KSE continued to encourage and provide facilities for its alumni to learn and develop their business skills through programmes and activities. When I graduated from university, I was still finding my feet and did not yet understand the business model.
In 2016, four years after graduating from university, I was invited to rejoin KSE activities in Solo with my friends. From there, I ended up participating in many training and entrepreneurship development programmes. In fact, KSE succeeded in providing an environment for people in the business field. KSE’s presence greatly helped me in starting a business that was initially still unstable. One of KSE’s flagship programmes is its camp activities. This activity allowed me to meet friends from diverse backgrounds across various regions throughout Indonesia.
Speaking of my business, my main programme currently focuses on education. I named this programme Sang Juara School. This programme is intended for prospective students who are preparing to enter university. There are two types of activities, namely tutoring and agency.
The operational office for this programme is based in the city of Surabaya. Most participants in the tutoring programme attend an intensive quarantine or camp programme. Participants stay at a hotel for a month and study from morning to evening and so on during the intensive period.
The market segmentation of my business is the upper-middle class. The number of participants or customers is not as large as online tutoring services usually have. The target market for my business is not that large, but it has high purchasing power.
The reason I run a programme in the field of education is because I see the business opportunities it offers. I learned from my mentor that the businesses that will always be in demand are culinary, health, and education.
Initially, this business served first-year students who needed guidance. However, when I wanted to scale up, I conducted market research and found that the market size for this business was small. After that, I thought of a new programme innovation with a larger market size to increase turnover and profits.
Finally, I developed it to the point where I now also offer tutoring services to prepare students for international classes and study abroad agencies. I built this business based on in-depth research on community needs. The results of my research influenced every decision I made in developing this business. All types of businesses, whatever they may be, are run and developed based on data.
The key to the success of my business idea is determining and implementing positioning. We have chosen a specific segment so that my competitors are not the usual tutoring services. I conduct competition metric analysis and analyse the needs of the target market.
The bottom line is that in building a business, we must understand market needs. We assume that the products or services we sell are good, unique, and so on. However, it turns out that these products or services are considered too expensive, are not accepted by the target market, do not provide a solution, or do not meet market needs.
Therefore, what needs to be considered in building a business is not what products we want to sell, but what the community needs. Most people need something simple that can be accepted immediately. It is important to conduct extensive research before building a business.