Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology plans to make digital start-ups a compulsory subject in Higher Education starting in 2022. Secretary of the Directorate General of Higher Education (Sesditjen Dikti), Paristiyanti Nurwardani, revealed that this will be prepared to start this year to provide start-up training to lecturers who will later lead the course.
In collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo), the Director-General of Higher Education formed the National 1000 Start-up Movement with a target of 100,000 students involved in start-up development by 2022. Later, the team that passes the start-up development selection will receive more intensive guidance so that they can last long and can enter the Kedaireka platform or campus business incubator.
This discourse is part of the government’s efforts to encourage the spread of more massive and quality start-ups in the development of the digital industry. The plan of the Directorate General of Higher Education to make this compulsory Digital Start-up course is in line with the Independent Campus programme and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology’s initiative to build the 1000 Start-up Movement.
This movement is a forum for mentoring and empowering the world of Digital start-ups in Indonesia. The 1000 Start-up Digital programme will be packaged in several stages from the basic level until it is ready to be tested to enter the market.
There are six stages for start-up founders, namely:
- Ignition, an online seminar that provides insights from start-up industry players and regulators.
- Networking, tiered activities with other participants in their respective regions.
- Workshop, providing technical and non-technical knowledge to build a start-up from idea to launch.
- Hacksprint, an idea brainstorming activity to become a minimum product ready for a test which will last for 3 days online and offline with coworking partners in each city.
- Bootcamp, perform customer validation with the guidance of programme mentors, UX, and business through video response; and
- Incubation, 1-on-1 mentoring with a dedicated mentor, and acceleration of 1 main key metric for 4 weeks.
While attending the National Working Meeting of the Indonesian Young Entrepreneurs Association (HIPMI), Minister for State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir said that Indonesia is the country with the largest number of start-ups or start-ups in the top five in the world.
Indonesia is in the fifth position behind the United States which has 66,806 start-ups, India 9,349 start-ups, UK 5,548 start-ups, and Canada 2,850 start-ups. Meanwhile, Indonesia has 2,219 start-ups.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, the Director-General of Information Applications of the Ministry of Communication and Information has encouraged all parties and stakeholders to participate in improving the digital literacy of the wider community.
The Ministry of Communication and Informatics is targeting digital literacy to reach all districts and cities in Indonesia by 2024. “By 2024, the ministry and its partners will carry out digital literacy in all 514 districts/cities in Indonesia,” explained Plt. Director of Informatics Empowerment of the Ministry of Communication and Information, Mariam Fatimah Barata in the Digital Literacy Webinar Towards Indonesia Digital Nation.
Mariam acknowledged that the use of the internet is currently so massive that it cannot be separated from everyday life. Therefore, digital literacy plays an important role in the journey towards the Indonesia Digital Nation. In terms of the number, the goal is to have 50 million literate Indonesians. Going in a phase-wise manner, they plan to reach the first 12.5 million people by 2021.
According to him, this should be an introspection for the Indonesian nation to be able to continue to improve digital literacy skills. Digital technology must also have added value for the Indonesian people. Technology is not only for fun or safety but should also be an incentive to be productive.
