Starting from the Home Kitchen, Arso's Homemade Ketan Brownies in Sidoarjo Breaks into the Global Market

Arso and Senior Executive Vice President of Ultra Micro Business BRI M. Candra Utama/ Photo: Dok. BRI

SIDOARJO - The successful journey of the culinary UMKM "It's Me Time" is proof that businesses that are managed seriously and supported by the right guidance can grow sustainably. The effort of brown sugar brownies with the flagship variant of Choco Chip from Sidoarjo, East Java, was pioneered by Jalian Setiarsa on November 2, 2017.

Starting from a home kitchen with a production capacity of around 300 pieces per month, Arso slowly saw the opportunity to develop his business as the market demand increased. To support the management of his increasingly growing business, he started to become a BRI savings customer since 2018 and established a banking relationship that later opened access to various BRI financial services and solutions.

The man who is often called Arso said that BRI's support is not only felt in terms of financing, but also from the assistance process provided directly by BRI officers in the field. "I feel how BRI officers understand our business needs, provide explanations in a friendly manner, and help my business process run more easily and according to business needs," he said.

Furthermore, Arso said that while being part of the BRI customer family, he felt the seriousness and commitment of BRI in supporting small business actors. In fact, all support from BRI officers became a spark of enthusiasm to continue to expand their business, because they felt that they were not alone in facing the capital challenges of the business.

After becoming a customer, Arso also took a step further into the coaching ecosystem by joining as one of the members of the BRI BUMN House. This is where the transformation process of his business began to take place more directly. Through the guidance provided regularly, the BUMN House team helps Arso to improve various aspects of the business, ranging from business governance, improving production quality, product packaging, to marketing strategies.

"The BUMN House officers guide It's Me Time in depth and intensively to correct the managerial aspects. There are so many business trainings that make me understand how to manage a business," he said.

He said that the mentors accompanied Arso in arranging the workplace, ranging from separating the production kitchen area from the private residence, to facilitating the handling of various raw legality. Thanks to the ongoing guidance, this food product has managed to obtain various official recognition from the national to global scale, including PIRT, Halal, GMP, SNI certificates, to international food safety standards Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP).

The steps to arrange quality and standardization have also successfully brought this culinary business to a much higher level. In 2021, the production volume of It's Me Time jumped sharply to reach 20,000 to 25,000 pieces per month, with marketing coverage that extends to Java, Sumatra, to Kalimantan through online and offline sales channels.

At its peak, BRI actively opened access to the world market by including them in prestigious exhibition events such as Brilianpreneur, Trade Expo Indonesia, Halal Food Turkey, to the Indonesian Exhibition Australia. This international network has successfully produced export realization transactions to Turkey and Hong Kong in 2021, Singapore and Australia in 2022, to Malaysia in 2023, which were accompanied by the achievement of prestigious awards such as the No. 1 BRI Best Product to the main ranking at the SNI Award.

"We are very helped by the regular training program, intensive mentoring, to financing support. These facilities make our insight more open in managing the business, as well as paving the way for marketing our products to be much wider," said Arso.

Senior Executive Vice President of Ultra Micro Business BRI M. Candra Utama emphasized that BRI has a long-term commitment to always be present to accompany the business journey of local creative industry players from the grassroots as an effort to move the people's economy.

"BRI is committed to continue to encourage MSMEs not only to survive, but also to be able to grow and upgrade sustainably. Through Rumah BUMN, we focus on improving business capacity and digital literacy so that MSMEs not only survive, but are able to grow sustainably and upgrade," concluded Candra. (ADV)