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When it comes to agritech, what often comes to mind is the farmer or producer of the goods, as well as the end-consumer and the process of shortening the journey from farm to table. But industries like Indonesian fisheries are more than just about the fishermen or the end-consumers — there is an entire, complex supply chain of businesses delivering, storing, and processing fishery products from their raw material state to markets across the globe. We go on call with returning guest Bayu Anggara, CEO and Co-Founder of FishLog, to talk about Indonesia’s fisheries supply chain (US$14B in captured fish and aquaculture) and the importance of redefining standards (see their recently launched real-time marketplace), capital access, and infrastructure access to unlock its potential in the global economy (US$6B in exports). 

Check out our first call with Bayu last year! While we focused more on local distribution and broad industry pain points last year, this year we dive deeper into supply chain pain points (e.g., financing, logistics for cold storage) and improving the industries’ global export growth.

Check out FishLog’s 2022 impact report!

Timestamps and Highlights

(00:34) FishLog’s 2022 in 3 numbers;

“FishLog has 50 locations across Indonesia, around 20,000 metric tons in cold storage…disbursed almost 3 million USD in financing to the fishermen, connecting them directly with the third party financing partners…our B2B marketplace is live, we manage around 3000 metric tons of inventory…”

(01:53) Macro (Global Exports) and Micro (Inflation) Drivers for Indonesia Fisheries;

“Indonesia exports around US$6 billion dollars in seafood per annum. And then from this 6 billion, 40% is going to the US. So America is [a] major market for us, and it is value-added (processed). It’s not raw material. If we talk about other countries, like China, 15% is going to China, but it’s mostly still raw material. If it’s raw material, it can be affected by the global economy because it needs to be processed there. And then the third one is going to Japan. It’s [around] 12% going to Japan. So all of these three major countries contribute a lot to our market share. But all of them are very strong in terms of consumption. I see that in the future we’ll be growing [these exports].”

(12:11) The Iron Triangle of Fisheries: Increasing Supply Chain Utility through Asset-Light Cold Chain Enablement, Financing Support, and Industry Standardization;

“So if you are a cold storage owner, we want to work with you together. We build FishLog Quality Center, so we can digitize your cold storage. We can standardize your inventory. We can standardize your operation. We can increase the utility of your cold storage, we can list your products in our marketplace. And then hopefully it can reach wider buyers or better buyers, and then we can do financing in terms of your inventory, if we can use your inventory as collateral. So that’s the concept of the FishLog: acquiring the supply information, acquiring the capital, and acquiring the infrastructure.”

(16:20) FishLog’s Stories of Sustainable Impact;

“With this kind of approach, I think we want to unlock the possibility of the financing platform to get into the fisheries community because if you know fisheries industry contributes 3% of the Indonesian GDP, but the financing from the macro financing, micro-financing, SME financing, they just contribute around 0.2%. So can you imagine only 0.2% because the industry is not trusted by the financial institution because it is seasonal?”

(21:46) Scaling an Organization for Indonesian Fisheries;

“The first one from the professional hire we put on the leadership level, VP right to the middle management level…What we should set is how we can become a greater company, how we can share the vision with them, and then they can translate that into the execution level…For the fresh graduate, we should inspire them, and bring them frameworks to execute and then they can learn from them and then they can go to the next level on the next job.”

(26:11) #MinuteMasterclass: Leveraging data, human capital, and standards of government and national institutions;

“Food is the most strategic [economic] area in Indonesia because we are exporting a lot of food as well, like palm oil, coconut, right? Milk, chocolate, and then for fish as well…Then for fish especially…the government has a lot of standards to adopt as well. So we can use their standards instead of having our own standard, paying a million for a consultant to standardize your process.”

(28:50) #RapidFireRound;

About our guest

Bayu Anggara is the CEO and co-founder of Indonesian B2B fisheries cold chain platform FishLog. Prior to FishLog, he was in the seafood products and trading food business and has had years of experience in the local fisheries industry. He graduated from Bogor Agricultural University with a Bachelors’ in Fisheries and Marine Technology.

Transcript

FishLog’s 2022 in 3 numbers

Paulo J: I mean, a lot has happened, with FishLog over the last year, so we have definitely a lot to talk about. But as I mentioned earlier, before we get into all the meat of the discussion, just wanted to ask for those first-time listeners who haven’t heard about FishLog before — if you were to describe FishLog in three numbers, what numbers would those be? 

Bayu A: Last year was very exciting. We hit a lot of [targets], and now we have a very clear path, including to profitability as well.

So the first thing is now FishLog has 50 locations across Indonesia. So it’s around 20,000 metric tons in cold storage because we are very focused on cold storage, digitizing the fishermen’s inventory. 

The second one is we do [business] financing as well. So we help the fishermen to get financing from third-party financing partners that we have. Last year we disbursed almost 3 million USD in financing to the fishermen, connecting them directly with third-party financing partners, including those through our platform. 

And then the last one, our B2B marketplace is live. So you can check it on our website, marketplace.fishlog.co.id. Now we manage around 3000 metric tons of inventory [there]. It’s real-time visibility [of inventory] across the nation. So hopefully with all of these metrics, we can scale FishLog even further.

“FishLog has 50 locations across Indonesia, around 20,000 metric tons in cold storage…disbursed almost 3 million IDR in financing to the fishermen, connecting them directly with the third party financing partners…our B2B marketplace is live, we manage around 3000 metrics tons of inventory…”

Macro (Global Exports) and Micro (Inflation) Drivers for Indonesia Fisheries 

Paulo J: Thanks for summarizing that and definitely a lot to look forward to in 2023. And speaking of 2023, you mentioned that your focus is more on scaling what you already have here in the ecosystem.

So what do you see in the larger market? I think there’s a lot of interest now in fisheries. And you know, there’s definitely a lot of investor interest as well in spite of the market headwinds. So what do you think will be the drivers this year for the fisheries in Indonesia, amidst the market headwinds?

Bayu A: I think we can break down the industry into two categories. The first one is macroeconomic, the second one is micro. Micro means that we need to solve the fisherman problem right from the bottom up.

The first one is quite interesting. The macro, as your question [goes]. [Fisheries] is a global supply chain, right? Even from the Indonesian perspective, mostly it is about exporting to other countries. So it is a global marketplace, a global value chain, and global transactions. So it will be directly affected by the global economy as well. That’s what we see. But eventually, I think in the last three years features I have shown that we can prove — that we can become [resilient even with] COVID [pandemic]. 

So, I think seafood is proven. The industry is proven because I believe fisheries or seafood is the cheapest and most affordable product and resource for the entire global economy that we can supply [affordably] to the customer. There is no replication and there is no other option for seafood and fisheries. And then with this kind of economic downturn in terms of the market, we [weren’t] impacted [as much]. 

But I think the second one is on the micro level. Micro means what we see with the fishermen, because of course there is inflation. And there is an increase in prices [of resources] like gasoline, and oil because fishermen are going fishing with oil or gasoline. So I think there is some change or price increase on the supply side. Like from the fishermen, I can say like a five to 10% increase because the [price of] gasoline is increasing as well. So I think that’s [what we can see] from the micro side.

Paulo J: I have two follow-up questions there. One is on the macro side, and thanks for, you know, breaking that down for listeners, into the two levels. On the first level, on the macro side with regards to exports, you mentioned that Indonesia exports globally. Is there a particular region that is high in demand for these like Indonesian exports in fisheries?

Bayu A: Indonesia exports around US$6 billion dollars in seafood per annum. And then from this 6 billion, 40% is going to the US. So America is [a] major market for us, and it is value-added (processed). It’s not raw material. If we talk about other countries, like China, 15% is going to China, but it’s mostly still raw material. If it’s raw material, it can be affected by the global economy because it needs to be processed there. And then the third one is going to Japan. It’s [around] 12% going to Japan. So all of these three major countries contribute a lot to our market share. But all of them are very strong in terms of consumption. I see that in the future we’ll be growing [these exports]. 

Paulo J: I also had a follow-up question for the micro level. So you talked about the fishermen being affected by inflation with the cost of gas or fuel. So how do you see this impacting FishLog’s operations? Or do you see this as actually an opportunity, maybe even with the financing business or some other aspects of the ecosystem to actually help these fishermen that are being affected by the increasing prices?

Bayu A: Actually it is an opportunity, right? The opportunity we can create a new standard for the fish prices because what I see is actually the fish price on the supply side is very low compared to the demand side, because there are a lot of middlemen there. 

So I think with this reasonable price, the price on the supply [can increase] and then the demand side [will] not really increase. So hopefully it will automatically eliminate the middlemen because they don’t want to do business with [an unreasonable] price. Right. So I think that’s what I see. 

But from the FishLog perspective, we can align on that because as a platform, we don’t invest in anything. So that’s why we build a FishLog Quality Center. It’s one of our crucial operation plans. We work together with the local cold storage partners and aggregator partners. We don’t invest in anything. So when we see that in some areas they don’t have any seasonality on the fish, then we don’t have any [incurred] costs that need to be paid. So I think that’s one of our strategy, right? Because fish is seasonal. Sometimes in some areas, there is a lot of fish. Another time they don’t have any kind of fish. So that’s why with this agile operation model, we can be more relevant to the changing of the industry.

Paulo J: I really like what you mentioned about the agile operating model and I’ll definitely have more questions about the FishLog Quality Center. But first I also wanted to ask about your views on, I would say, how the digitalization of fisheries has evolved over the past year in general. There are definitely a lot more fishery startups in the space But still there’s, even in Indonesia I would say, a lot of fragmentation, right? There’s still a lot of market to be covered. So how do you see the increasing activity within your space, impacting FishLog’s own positioning over time?

Bayu A: For this fisheries digitalization, it’s very exciting because I think in terms of all of the agritech space in Indonesian fisheries [is in a] very strong position. We have great startup fundraising across the year, right? And we have a couple of startups that are already funded. They have multiple business models, unique business models, right?

So actually we can focus on two things. The first one is any kind of solution or any kind of technology that can increase the productivity of the farmers. How do you deliver great delivery in terms of the feed, supporting the fishermen’s input, right? Then you give the IoT technology to increase their productivity, and then at the end, you can purchase their harvest.

The second one is a model like FishLog, right? How can we increase the utility of the middle chain? The utility of the cold chain, from our perspective, is the distribution, how can we distribute more to make it more efficient? How can we become an end-to-end player to…stabilize supply and demand right? It’s a different ball game. It needs to be a different focus. So I think in Indonesia all of the startups already fill in a couple of roles or a couple of categories, and we are completing each other. So that’s what I like — when I see all of these fisheries startups [working] together to transform the Indonesian fisheries supply chain. 

“Indonesia exports around US$6 billion dollars in seafood per annum. And then from this 6 billion, 40% is going to the US. So America is [a] major market for us, and it is value-added (processed). It’s not raw material. If we talk about other countries, like China, 15% is going to China, but it’s mostly still raw material. If it’s raw material, it can be affected by the global economy because it needs to be processed there. And then the third one is going to Japan. It’s [around] 12% going to Japan. So all of these three major countries contribute a lot to our market share. But all of them are very strong in terms of consumption. I see that in the future we’ll be growing [these exports].”

The Iron Triangle of Fisheries: Increasing Supply Chain Utility through Asset-Light Cold Chain Enablement, Financing Support, and Industry Standardization

Paulo J: And actually your second point leads me to the next question, because you talked about FishLog really focusing on distribution efficiency, and supply chain utility, and I wanted to go back to the FishLog Quality Center and also even talk about FishFin, right? in some way, FishLog Quality Center is really about distribution of the actual SKUs to cold storage. And then FishFin is also distribution, in a way, of capital. So maybe you can talk a little bit about the flexibility aspect, because I find that really interesting. Maybe you can provide some examples of how you’re able to be flexible in terms of distributing both SKUs and capital through the Quality Center and also FishFin.

Bayu A: So I want to bring you through our strategy first. So when I learned all of these B2B marketplace enablers are growing right, I saw that there are a couple of stakeholders and they need to be acquired first. For the example with Airbnb, right? They need to be acquiring the hotel first and then they can sell the hotel, right? So as simple as that. 

So for  FishLog, if we want to recognize revenue, it’s not possible to have only the information on the supply. For example, in Bali, there is a tuna landing in Bali [but] then you cannot do anything from there. The second one is you need to have the capital supply. After you get the inventory information supply, you need to have the capital supply. Because fishermen want to pay immediately when they deliver into your cold storage, into your processing…If they don’t get paid immediately, they will sell to the other players, right? So the second one is the capital supply. 

But we think that if we are using our own capital, and our own balance sheet, it will be heavy on us. And when it grows, it takes a lot of working capital. So we find a way to do an off-balance sheet model, so we aggregate FinTechs and we become a channeling partner for them.

So we unlock the industry and we create a system that can become trustable for them and then they can disburse money through our model, right? So the capital supply is already unlocked, and then they can disburse in our industry, and then the fishermen can get the cash immediately. That’s the second one. 

For the third one, you have the inventory, you have the capital, but you need to wait until the logistics are ready. For example, you already have the tuna in Bali, but the logistics (delivery) are happening the next week so you need to put the tuna somewhere. That’s why you need to put it somewhere in some location, which is cold storage, but it’s not possible to do that in any location. You need to build your own cold storage, but it will be heavy on the investment, heavy on the assets, and we don’t want to invest in assets too much. 

That’s why we bring a strong value proposition for the existing cold storage processor players, so we can work together with them and we can use their existing infrastructure as our leverage so we can put the fish SKUs in their warehouses. That’s why we have a Fishlog Quality Center. 

So if you are a cold storage owner, we want to work with you together. We build FishLog Quality Center, so we can digitize your cold storage. We can standardize your inventory. We can standardize your operation. We can increase the utility of your cold storage, we can list your products in our marketplace. And then hopefully it can reach wider buyers or better buyers, and then we can do financing in terms of your inventory if we can use your inventory as collateral. So that’s the concept of the FishLog: acquiring the supply information, acquiring the capital, and acquiring the infrastructure. 

Paulo J: This actually reminds me of — you just described pretty much the e-commerce triangle, right? You need the marketplace, you need the fintech, and you need the logistics, which you tied all together with FishLog. You guys have the marketplace, the B2B cold chain marketplace. Then you have the FishLog Quality Center, which covers the logistics side. And then you have FishFin, which covers the FinTech side. For the Quality Center, just to clarify, the warehouses that you partner with, you’re also able to help them with their income as well, right? 

Bayu A: Their problems are quite similar. The first one is the lack of capital, right? They have a lot of orders but [managing] the cash flow is very hard. They will get the payment from the buyer after the product is delivered or after the product is already processed, but they need to pay immediately to the fishermen. That’s the first one, the cash flow problem. 

The second one is the supply problem. So they have very limited resources for supply. But in two years, we have 45 to 50 locations across Indonesia. So we can give them any kind of alternative that they can source [from]. And we have our own QC or quality control across the nation. They can rely on us in terms of sourcing. 

The third one is, of course, they want to scale, they want to grow, but they need more buyers, they need more market. So they work with FishLog to unlock the global demand, and then we can help them to scale their business in their own area. So that kind of approach that we do in the upstream.

Paulo J: I think another interesting aspect of FishLog, because of the scale that you guys have, which is nationwide — one thing that you’re also able to do, and you talked a little bit about this, is the standardization, and even you wrote this article last year about like the naming standards, how to name different SKUs and all of that. So maybe you can share a little bit about that with our listeners. Because of the fact that you guys work nationwide and you work with many different sorts of partners across the archipelago, you’re able to sort of create standards and that could really help them.

Bayu A: You can build a great system. You can build a very standard naming for the commodity. But if you are not operating with the standard, it means nothing, right? The platform without the operator means nothing. This brings us to our program which we call FishLog Academy.

…This year we want to become a global operation. We want to establish our company downstream. We want to scale in Southeast Asia as well. So when we want to scale it, the problem [will be on] the people, right? The people are there, but it’s not standardized. So we should standardize the [training].

That’s why we built FishLog Academy. FishLog Academy is not just a fancy university that is owned by any kind of startup, right? All of the startups, they want to build their own academy, but we are really, really [solving a] problem now. We have 230 people across Indonesia, so we need to standardize [how they] judge…in terms of the quality, in terms of the price, in terms of the stock affordability. That’s why now we have more than 50 quality control centers across Indonesia. So with this kind of approach and the standardization of learning, I think it can scale…

Paulo J: And so the people who actually go to the Academy, these are people who say they finish the program…where do they go? What kind of roles are you training them for? Is it just QC roles?

Bayu A: There are two types. The first one is how do you judge the quality? This is the quality control role, [where]…equipped with the frameworks, you can judge the quality if it is bad or good or best quality. That’s the first one. 

The second one is the operation role. It is a warehouse or cold storage management role. So when we establish a new partnership for FishLog Quality Center in some area, we will send our people from the head office and then they will standardize all of the operations.

So the operation role is [separate] from the quality role, but their KPI is the service level agreement, like the inbound, outbound, inventory management, stock opdev, and all of these things. Now we are very focused on these two roles.

“So if you are a cold storage owner, we want to work with you together. We build FishLog Quality Center, so we can digitize your cold storage. We can standardize your inventory. We can standardize your operation. We can increase the utility of your cold storage, we can list your products in our marketplace. And then hopefully it can reach wider buyers or better buyers, and then we can do financing in terms of your inventory, if we can use your inventory as collateral. So that’s the concept of the FishLog: acquiring the supply information, acquiring the capital, and acquiring the infrastructure.”

FishLog’s Stories of Sustainable Impact

Paulo J: Thanks for clarifying that. And I think one takeaway definitely from everything we’ve discussed so far is that fisheries is more than just the fishermen. There are definitely a lot of other players that are facing their own issues and pain points, and you guys are addressing that. 

So you captured all the progress that we’ve talked about, all these like parts and pieces of the ecosystem, in a recently published impact report that came out a few weeks ago. But I’m curious to know, why now? And what made you decide to do the report? 

Bayu A: Actually, [as we are getting] things bigger, we [decided we] should have the impact report. We want to build a company that is impactful to the ecosystem. It’s not just for the fishermen, but for the buyers as well. How we can deliver products at affordable prices at scale across the nation and across the globe, right? So the impact report is very important for us. 

There are a lot of activists, and a lot of perceptions seeing that our industry is not sustainable. So they see that fisheries is not sustainable. We want to fight that [perception]. We want to prove that fisheries is sustainable and impactful. We believe that the industry is sustainable, but how [do we do that]? When other people manage it, it’s not sustainable, right? Especially for big companies. For the big companies, when they do their fishing method, it’s not sustainable, right?

That’s why we want to enable the smaller fisheries companies, and smaller fishermen, right? A smaller distributor to integrate together in our platform so we can unite together, we can become a consortium to make it more sustainable, because the management of huge companies is not sustainable. They can do everything to get fish, right?

So I think we want to fight on that. We want to prove [it can be done]. And then along the way, hopefully we can educate the stakeholders. We can educate the global community that Fishlog model…can provide a very sustainable way to deliver fish from fishermen and B2B buyers, right?

So that’s why we need to establish on an annual basis our growth and our impact across the ecosystem and how it is impacting the global community as well. It is our first impact report. There is still a lot of improvement, but hopefully we can improve a lot of things this year [as well].

Paulo J: And I think definitely with your goal to really scale operations, there’ll be a lot more stories to share through next year’s report even. So one of the interesting things from the report was reading about the partners who actually shared some stories in the report. So maybe you can share with our listeners your favorite example.

Bayu A: I think there are a lot of stories, but the story that I [relate to] personally, because I’ve been there actually is the first one, which is actually how we provide the inventory visibility. So, Paulo, if you can visit our website, marketplace.fishlog.co.id. It’s become a new standard. So fishermen…they can see their [products have] become a FishLog standard. 

So for example, there is a skipjack in Surabaya, and then the price is $2. That becomes the standard. I’m very happy about that. I’m very excited because so far before FishLog, there has been no standard on the fish price. Maybe the government put the standard, but there are not many people [following] that kind of standard and then they have their own price.

So hopefully as we grow now — we’re still very, very small — but as we grow, we want to capture more inventory in real-time so we can adjust the standard, at least from the price standard and from the quality standard. That’s the first one. 

The second one is from my experience, a couple of months ago, when we helped one of our partners in Tarnate in North Maluku, to get the first Dolphin Safe certification. So Dolphin Safe is one of the sustainable certifications to prove the fishermen that while they do tuna catching, they didn’t catch dolphins. So we help them to increase the standard. We help them to do bookkeeping as well. We help them to create a methodology as well to get to this standard.

The last one is we do financing, right? We do inventory financing for fish. We are doing the first inventory financing for fish. Before there is no one doing this. in fact, no bank believed in this model. So we just received our fiduciary certification. It’s like a government-recognized certification. With this certification, with this fiduciary certification, FinTechs and Banks are starting to believe that we can manage the inventory. The inventory is there and then we make sure that the quality is good.

With this kind of approach, I think we want to unlock the possibility of the financing platform to get into the fisheries community because if you know fisheries industry contributes 3% of the Indonesian GDP, but the financing from macro financing, micro-financing, SME financing, they just contribute around 0.2%.

So can you imagine only 0.2% because the industry is not trusted by the financial institution because it is seasonal? The bookkeeping is not really good. On an annual basis, it’s good. But on a weekly basis and a monthly basis, it’s not really good. So we want to break this status quo. We want to make the fisheries industry really good to be investable as long as we manage very well in terms of the operation. 

“With this kind of approach, I think we want to unlock the possibility of the financing platform to get into the fisheries community because if you know fisheries industry contributes 3% of the Indonesian GDP, but the financing from the macro financing, micro-financing, SME financing, they just contribute around 0.2%. So can you imagine only 0.2% because the industry is not trusted by the financial institution because it is seasonal?”

Scaling an Organization for Indonesian Fisheries

Paulo J: I think one thing leads to another in this ecosystem and you guys are definitely capturing a lot of different parts of that. I wanted to shift gears a little bit and talk about your management approach. You’ve been running FishLog for several years now, two, or three years. You have a lot of different products and offerings. And then you have different teams handling these like multiple lines of business. So what has your approach been to handling all of these moving parts? How do you approach prioritization as CEO at FishLog? 

Bayu A: Now we have almost three years in terms of the initial establishment of FishLog. We [went] from five guys to 230 people. That’s our total team right now, full-time and contract. And then the second one is we manage people from three different countries, from Indonesia, from India, and from the US as well. So it is very challenging. The age range is a very wide range from 25 to 50 years old.

So I am 29, but my team is 25 to 50 years old, so it needs a lot of experience actually. So I don’t have that kind of approach, that’s why we are supported by a lot of mentors who can help us…So I think for the strategy, we should break down [our hires] into two different categories.

The first one is the professional hire, right? The second one we call it a fresh graduate or fresher higher. So we need to separate that because they have different goals. They have different appetites. They have different mindsets.

The first one from the professional hire we put on the leadership level, VP right to the middle management level. They’re self-driven, right? We can [have high expectations from] them because they bring the expertise, they bring their frameworks from their previous companies [to] FishLog.

They have quite a fixed mindset, but that’s good as long as we can filter them at first and then we are okay with this kind of approach. So we should share the vision, the greater vision that we have because they have everything they [need to] execute. They have the frameworks. They have the leadership. They can influence other people to join our team. 

What we should set is how we can become a greater company, and how we can share the vision with them, and then they can translate that into the execution level. So that’s how to maintain all of this professional-level leadership.

The second one is the fresh grads. With this, fresh grads only have a maximum of two years of expertise. They’re as young as I am, right? So they’re very spirited. Mostly they’re not married yet. And then they are doers. They have a very high loyalty to us, to the founders, and to the company. And they have nothing to lose. They just want to learn. 

So how we manage them is actually we become a mentor for them. So they don’t bring in anything. We equip them with the frameworks. We equip them with the inspiration for the execution strategy. And then we can deploy them across Indonesia. 

So this kind of approach that we use, both for the professional and fresh graduates is different. For the fresh graduate, we should inspire them, and bring them frameworks to execute and then they can learn from them and then they can go to the next level on the next job, right?

From these different approaches, we have similar aspects. The first one is the vision. The vision is to conquer the global market to become a global operation to meet with global talent as well. Even I must be excited on daily basis about this vision. If I’m not sharing my excitement and then they will not be excited as well, right? 

The second one is the impact. The impact means that our industry is very fragmented and is a very densely populated industry. So we should engage with a lot of people, a lot of stakeholders, including fishermen. So I think this is an unfair advantage for us as well because we are in a good industry to inspire other people to create an impact by working with us. 

The third one is — we are in a niche market. Fisheries, ocean, and marine, operating across the nation, I think we cannot change this, but with this kind of niche industry, we will invite the specific people who are actually interested in our industry. So it’s like automatically they can become interested in our industry, in fisheries, in marine. So I think this is the kind of [message] that we are always sounding in all of our marketing channels external and internal, so they can attach on that.

“The first one from the professional hire we put on the leadership level, VP right to the middle management level…What we should set is how we can become a greater company, how we can share the vision with them, and then they can translate that into the execution level…For the fresh graduate, we should inspire them, and bring them frameworks to execute and then they can learn from them and then they can go to the next level on the next job.”

#MinuteMasterclass: Leveraging data, human capital, and standards of government and national institutions

Paulo J: So on that note, I wanted to move into a new corner for our discussion, which is the #MinuteMasterclass. For FishLog specifically, I know you guys work a lot closer with government and national institutions as well because this is very much an industry that, as you said, is 3% of Indonesia’s GDP. And there’s also a lot of standardization and all of that, that also requires institutional support. So if you could give a masterclass about leveraging PPP or public-private partnerships or working with government and national institutions to build a business like FishLog, what would be the key learning that you would want the students of this class to take home?

Bayu A: The first one is we should strengthen our mindset that for all of the industries that are heavily related to the government, we should talk with them. We should know their policy as well because it is very heavy on policy, even in the national policy, on individual regional policy, right? 

And then it’s food, right? Food is the most strategic [economic] area in Indonesia because we are exporting a lot of food as well, like palm oil, and coconut, right? Milk, chocolate, and then fish as well. So I think we should work with them…

The first one is we should utilize their data. Of course, a lot of people say that the government has data is not really matched (accurate), but at least we are starting from their data so we can leverage that: what area has the most potential? Who are the players? What is the condition right now? We can use their data. 

The second one is we can use their government talent across the nation. We can work together. We can inspire them as our vision. So we should utilize them. Because they have a lot of resources. The government has a lot of resources deployed across the nation, and then we can work together with them to unlock the opportunity in each area and in each region. 

Then for fish especially, I think fish is very important and then it’s hard to handle. The government has a lot of standards to adopt as well. So we can use their standards instead of having our own standard, paying a million for a consultant to standardize your process. So we can use their existing government standards or we can use the existing big company’s standards. So we can work with them together and then we can increase our standard. We can establish our standard according to their decades-long experience, right? 

So I think that’s the insight that I can share. The important thing is [to figure out] how we should have a partnership with the government, public private partnership.

“Food is the most strategic [economic] area in Indonesia because we are exporting a lot of food as well, like palm oil, coconut, right? Milk, chocolate, and then for fish as well…Then for fish especially…the government has a lot of standards to adopt as well. So we can use their standards instead of having our own standard, paying a million for a consultant to standardize your process.”

#RapidFireRound

If you could produce a Netflix what would be the title of the show?

Bayu A: In these couple of weeks, I saw a lot of entrepreneurship series. So I think the title will be like, “Founder Spirit.” So it’s like a documentary that shows the entrepreneurial journey from zero to one that can inspire my child as well. 

Looking back now, what is a skill, could be a soft skill or a hard skill, that you think you should have learned back in your time as a student? 

Bayu A: I think the first one is critical thinking, right? Because it is very important. Now that we have 200 people, everyone comes to me and then asks me everything, right?… they know the problem. They are close to the problem, but they are afraid to decide, maybe because they don’t have the mental model or it’s too big for them. But I think this critical thinking, decision-making, the reasoning is very important. So anything you can face, any problem you face, I think you should [be able to] solve. And then now in FishLog, we are starting to develop decentralized decision-making. So whatever the decision is, strategic or tactical or so, it must be solved by the team directly.

And then the second one, I think for the hard skill, I don’t know if this is a soft or hard skill, but the second one is the fundraising skill. It is very, very important. So fundraising is not just about asking the money from the investor, but you need to tell the story. You need to tell the story, and then the story should be projected into your financial projections. It’s not just for the story, but you should put on the financial operations. And then you should put this on the pitch deck as well. Because it should be visualized on the pitch deck. So this is a kind of multi-skill, but it can also be not [referred to] as a fundraising skill. It’s about how we can make people believe our dream and then [take a] risk on us, seeing into the future and working together with us for a couple of years. 

If there’s something that you can automate in your job just by wishing for it, what aspect of that role would that be?

Bayu A: Now we have a ChatGPT, which is very booming right now. So I’m thinking about how we can extract or how we can acquire knowledge from our mentors. Because for me, I have a lot of mentors. I note their advice. Another time I didn’t note the advice but all of them are gold. So I think if there is any automation that we can put that we can automate the note-taking on all of the mentor suggestions, books, or podcasts and then it can become insightful information for me and it’s relevant today to our problem right now, I think it’ll be very, very helpful for me. 

What destination in Indonesia would you recommend for people who are looking to do like fishing tourism? 

Bayu A: Sustainable fishing tourism is quite a big thing here. But when we talk about fishing tourism, it should start from general tourism first. If you just go to the fishing tourism mostly, it’s not supported by perfect infrastructure, so it’s not easy to get there, as a tourist. You need to take a one hour or two-hour trip. I can say like North Sulawesi is very good, right? And then Ambon. Amon is in Maluku and then North Maluku is very good as well. Those are the tourist spots that I think I can recommend. 

Paulo J: Maybe if you have some people who are listening who are also into fishing, what’s popular in Ambon for example?

Bayu A: It’s popular for tuna. And then Maluku is also tuna and then Bitung, North Sulawesi, they are the city of skipjack. Skipjack is also part of the tuna species. 

Anything you’ve read or anything, any resource that you’ve used recently or podcast or any show or anything that you’d taken up recently that you’d like to recommend to our listeners?

Bayu A: I’ll recommend a book. I read this book a lot, four times. So the book is a book of Naval Ravikant, the Almanack of Naval Ravikant. So now it’s released in hardcover. So I think it’s really good. I read the digital copy. I bought the original copy as well. And then it reminded me a lot of the mental model for founders. And it is good for first-time founders for me, and for you if you’re first-time founders. But you need to read it again and again because sometimes you may not get the meaning now, but if you read it the next month, then you get the meaning, right? So I think that’s why instead of reading a new book every week, every month better to read an existing book. That’s my advice.