If there is anyone who looks down or not even familiar with the term cooperative, they should know the fact that 12% of the world population are members of cooperatives and it also employed around 280 million people.

For almost all around the world, cooperative industry plays an essential part in the country’s economy. In Kenya, it contributes around 43% of PDB, also 42% of Japan’s populations are members of cooperatives, while in Singapore, 1 of 2 people is part of cooperative industry. In Indonesia, cooperative industry projected to reach more than 120,000 units with contributionn to PDB around 5%.

Although the number gap is quite large with other countries, cooperative is still a crucial economic line in this country. Ther is a reason to put cooperative as one of the ministries in Indonesia. Kodi (Digital Cooperative), a startup founded in 2018, agreed on this term.

Kodi‘s CEO & Founder, Inra Sumahamijaya said there are 37 million people registered as members of cooperatives or around 13% of the total Indonesian population. However, he thought the big number is not facilitated with end-to-end information, particularly for financial well-being.

“Cooperatives also have problems with transparency in fund management, revenue flow, and management due to difficult access to digital technology solutions. Even if there is, the price is not affordable by small and micro cooperatives,” Sumahamijaya told DailySocial.

With such huge market potential and the following problems, Kodi arrived with a software as a service (SaaS) platform solution. The Kodi platform allows each cooperative unit to use a simplified banking system for recording online and offline cooperative transactions. Their platform can also be used for cooperative membership management, end-of-year meetings, as well as cashier applications.

“Kodi monetize with various channels, one is using subscription with Rp1,000 cost per member per month,” he added.

Kodi targets various types of cooperatives, ranging from employee cooperatives to savings and loan cooperatives. But so far Inra claimed to focus on employee cooperatives and community cooperatives first. At present they have pocketed more than 30 cooperatives as clients, some of which come from national banks, private banks, financial authorities, doctors’ associations, to retail stores.

In terms of funding, Kodi is still in the pre-seed phase of a number of angel investors. With market potential and available technology, Sumahamijaya estimates that more cooperative digitization platforms will play. He said, this will bring a positive impact on the domestic economy.

“Kodi is confident with cooperative vertical future to freshen up and modern to make bigger contribution to Indonesia’s economy,” he said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian