Initiating Fisheries SMEs, FT UM Surabaya Students Win Business Competitions

CI-EL Campus Competition, the largest business case competition in East Java, which this year has the theme "SMEs Transformation Towards Sustainability". The team from UM Surabaya Naila Akmalia, Moch. Fadli and Muhammad Alfiyan, who are fifth-semester students at the UM Surabaya Industrial Engineering study program, won 3rd place (09/12/2021) by initiating the Aqua Fish Shop, a sociopreneurship-based start-up marketplace to support the sale and distribution of information from fisheries MSMEs to their consumers.

The team's reason for initiating the Aqua Fish Shop was based on data from the UN Food and Algiculturu Organization (FAO), that the level of fish consumption in Indonesia is still relatively low compared to neighboring countries which have a smaller sea area.

According to Mochammad Alfiyan as the product manager in this team, the low consumption of fish in Indonesia is due to people's mindset and awareness about the importance of eating fish as a source of protein which is important for brain development. Indonesian people prefer food with a fast and easy process to reach. The ease of reaching difficult fish is due to the small number of MSME products in Indonesia.

"Our hope is that by becoming one of the top 3 finalists, it can be a door in realizing our hopes to develop MSMEs in Indonesia to be better, and to provide motivation for the younger generation to start a business for the next 10 years," said Alfiyan.

Meanwhile, when being interviewed in his room, Junaidi Fery Effendi as the Head of the Bureau of Student Affairs, Alumni and Innovation (BAKAI) UM Surabaya conveyed the student's idea through the Afish start-up that it was hoped that it could become a bridge that helps accelerate and smooth the sales of fishing MSMEs, especially in East Java. The hope is that when this can develop, this startup will also be able to cover a wider area. So that Afish can be a solution to the problems that occur in fisheries SMEs.

"In line with the tagline of UM Surabaya which is a campus of a million innovations, we will continue to support student innovations. We will continue to promote this product as a community service program so that it is able to empower fisheries MSMEs as a driver of people's welfare in Indonesia to reduce poverty," said Junaidi.