Fauzi Assegaf and Untag Pranata (Unzyp Software)
Nestled down a narrow street in Jakarta Selatan - Pejaten Barat to be precise - resides a blossoming cloud business housing bold ambitions.
Unzyp Software is a south of the city start-up specialising in software, hardware, technology training and research development.
But this is a local business with a twist, offering authentic updates via Instagram through the hashtag #startuplife, while providing english speaking training to team members to increase productivity levels and information gathering techniques.
Irrespective of mother tongue however, Unzyp is speaking the language of cloud to an Indonesian market on the cusp of technological change.
“The awareness of technology is on the rise, spanning major industries and driving digital transformation demand,” observed Untag Pranata, co-founder and managing director of Unzyp Software. “There is a new hashtag that has been circling around for the past two years, intelligent transformation is now officially the new digital transformation.”
According to Pranata - when speaking exclusively to Channel Asia - such momentum has transitioned into a “new industrial revolution” impacting every industry across the country, driven by change at the top.
Specifically, this happened when the Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy (BEKRAF) heralded the imminent arrival of Industry 4.0, backed by the expectation that business processes and systems will soon be assisted by artificial intelligence (AI).
“This transformation is expected to be ready within a decade,” Pranata said. “But most businesses in manufacturing are already starting to get their hands on it. They believe this will create less human interactions which will boost production efficiency by up to 74 per cent.”
Riding the crest of this wave has been Unzyp - co-founded by Fauzi Assegaf as president - leveraging a strong customer base across the manufacturing sector, with a deepened focus on the automotive space.
“2018 was an insightful year for us,” Pranata added. “One of our customers is a Japanese automotive manufacturer which requires hardware such as a pick-to-light system to find out their stock inventory, how much stock has been produced, and even then forecasting stocks needed for the next period. As these requirements are sorted, they generate huge amounts of data along the way.”
Citing Jack Ma - co-founder of Alibaba Group - Pranata acknowledged that in Indonesia, data is fast becoming the “new currency”.
“This is the new gold which does not require a physical matter because of the cloud,” Pranata explained. “All of our customers in manufacturing have different situations with different solutions but they all share the same goal - to maximise the potential of big data.
“Data can be used to help business intelligence teams provide managerial decisions and risk forecasts. We also have a division to analyse and process such data to get more insightful information which can be passed on as valuable data for our customers.”
Tech credentials
From a technology perspective, Unzyp is exploring a host of new and emerging solutions, spanning AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT) and even blockchain. To test market appetite, the start-up researches cloud services which are openly available on the leading cloud platforms of Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.
“Using these tools really helps us to bundle new technology with solutions that the market needs,” Pranata added. “In addition, we collaborate with Microsoft to provide 21st Century skills training. This freemium program provides new knowledge in latest technologies by using Microsoft products as learning tools, accompanied by paid certificates.”
Specific to vendors, Pranata said Unzyp partners primarily with Microsoft and Google Cloud to provide a “diverse” range of cloud services to customers.
For example, Microsoft is required from a data visualisation standpoint through Power BI, with Azure offering added expertise through data patterning and representation. Meanwhile, the provider leverages Google Cloud’s “plug-and-play” tools for developers, maximising the potential of BigQuery within the cloud data space.
“Competition in the technology industry is strong,” Pranata acknowledged. “But we choose to collaborate with our competitors, because together we can provide a variety of solutions to the customer. Every player in this industry has a certain focus, so we complement each other.
“For example, one of our partners is focusing on Internet marketing, virtualisation, and is even entering the robotic sector. We believe that being an Avenger is better than being Superman.
“When facing customers, our unique value proposition centres around our ability to provide solutions from all sides of the market. From software, hardware, cloud computing and also training. But of course, there are some things that cannot be done without collaboration.”
As a technology provider, Pranata said the simple aim of Unzyp is to offer a new solution capable of improving efficiency for customers. But in a point of differentiation, the start-up doesn’t stop there.
“The important attributes that most technology providers forget about are after-sales and research services,” he said. “After-sales and research services become our support system and help drive our success in technology.
“We also provide training and education to our customers - the objective is to provide new ideas as to how new technologies can be implemented to support their business.”
Customer priorities
The digital economy of one of the most dynamic and fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, is expected to account for 61 per cent of the country’s GDP by 2022.
According to IDC, the digitalised economy will feed into and heat up competition across the country, especially when the digital disruptors are heavily penetrating into the Indonesian market.
“Digitalisation is not confined to just one part of the enterprise, nevertheless, it is transforming major aspects of enterprises' offerings, operations, and relationships,” said Mevira Munindra, head of operations of IDC Indonesia. “These new technologies are changing paradigms for individuals, businesses, industries, economies, and governments.
“We see local enterprises continue to become more competitive in driving and accelerating DX in their organisation because IT and business leaders have started to acknowledge more of the digitalisation’s benefits in the corporate strategy.”
Munindra said Indonesia has seen “continuous growth” over the past year in digital innovation and initiatives from the local enterprises to compete and thrive in the digital transformation landscape.
Third platform technologies such as cloud, big data and analytics, social and mobility; and innovation accelerators such as AI, security and IoT, are becoming the key enablers in driving multiplied innovation for businesses nationwide.
“Most businesses are concerned with providing the best customer experience to their customers, creating increased demand for chatbots,” Pranata added. “Through chatbots, customers can instantly get what they want with end-to-end conversations. In terms of business benefits, sales conversions will certainly increase significantly.”
As explained by IDC, by 2024, AI-enabled user interfaces and process automation will replace one-tenth of today's screen-based apps and by 2022, 10 per cent of Indonesian enterprises will use conversational speech tech for customer engagement.
Then through machine learning, Pranata said businesses can take advantage of a platform capable of distinguishing customers accurately, while also providing recommendations to match specific requirements.
“This could start from film recommendations, or similar products that have been purchased or your favourite foods,” Pranata outlined. “The second key trend is the payment experience, which has been on the rise in Indonesia since 2017.
“Starting from GoPay, OVO and DANA, many more fintech products are entering the market. Generally, they all offer the same in that they provide unique experiences by allowing customers to shop without a physical wallet. They have one vision, to dominate the millennial generation and move the market into a cashless generation.
"Since Indonesia is one of the most populous Muslim countries, Sharia law also becomes an interesting element in financial inclusion.
"The Sharia community is growing rapidly and this will probably become a new buzz and create new standards in the future of Indonesian banking. One of our customers has taken the lead on Sharia-compliant peer-to-peer lending technology, and it’s raging."
In taking a balanced view of the market - and the new technologies housed within it - Pranata cited Newton’s Law, stating that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.
“Intelligent technology will have a big impact on the social and economic segments of Indonesia,” he said. “Especially through the absorption of labour in industries that requires a lot of human interference - that will slowly be replaced by machines.
“What we can provide to the community is an invitation to participate in transformation and adapt to the rapid technological developments. By understanding skills such as data science, data analysis, business intelligence, and many others, they can certainly improve the careers of each individual. As a business, this is why we also provide training to help advance understanding of job skills in the future.”
In looking ahead to 2019 and beyond, Pranata said Unzyp is focused on “elevating synergy” with customers to advocate the benefits of cloud and data within the context of Industry 4.0.
“We’re also building a team specialising in growth-hacking to provide solutions for small and medium-sized businesses [SMBs], corporations and government agencies,” he added. “We have a vision that in the year ahead more SMBs will be digitalised.
"The data shows that SMBs in Indonesia contributed 60 per cent of economic growth. Therefore, cloud subscription services will become an interesting business.
“There are also lots of prospects within software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-services and even learning-as-a-service. Those are the opportunities that we aim to capitalise on in the year ahead.”
