SEED Starter: Helping To Raise Impactful Entrepreneurs

It has been Instellar’s commitment since our establishment in 2017 to continue developing and helping social entrepreneurs to have impactful businesses. We play the role as catalyst, consultant, and liaison for the community as the forms of our commitment, to the extent of developing curriculum for incubation and acceleration programs.

One of the real actions that we took was to partner with SEED and hold an activity called the SEED Starter Workshop. The activity, which was held on 24-26 February 2023 in Yogyakarta, is part of the Design Phase.

SEED was launched by UNEP, UNDP and IUCN at the World Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship for sustainable development. Over 20 years, SEED has supported more than 2,000 companies and trained more than 500 business development providers in 41 countries, and engaged with 950 organizations in Latin America & Pacific, Africa and Asia.

Then, what is the SEED Starter Workshop? The SEED Starter Workshop is a program created to implement business ideas into attractive and beneficial products or services for the environment.

The SEED Starter program consists of six phases, starting from the Discover Phase, the Design Phase, the Testing Phase, the Refine Phase and finally the Demonstration. The workshop, which was attended by 35 participants and divided into 14 groups used the SEED Starter Toolkit as a guideline.

On the first day of the workshop, the participants filled out an empathy map so they could understand more deeply about their customers. In addition, these ecopreneurs also work together to make visual prototypes and identify who their target market is.

On the second day, the workshop started by completing the group’s analysis of their target market, choosing the right basic business models and getting to know how well-established social enterprises operate in Indonesia, two of which are Komodo Water from Indonesia and All Women Recycling from South Africa .

The second day of the workshop ended with a pitching session. The three groups that came out with the best pitches were Freemie, Indomaggo, and Green Waqf. For the winners, Instellar gave small prizes in the form of recycled straws and woven bags made from recycled plastic waste from the social enterprises GoPurun and Shams Handicraft. The two social enterprises are alumni of the previous Instellar program, the Hack-SUP Innovation Lab and the 2022 Hyundai Startup Challenge.

The last day was the day where ecopreneurs tested their ideas. Starting from learning how to reduce risk systematically, understanding the concept of testing, developing a testing roadmap, setting brand or company priorities. Workshop participants will also carry out a Test Phase over the next few weeks. In this phase they will directly deal with customers and stakeholders to validate their business idea whether it is acceptable in the market.

In May, the workshop participants will gather again to continue the next phase, which will be the Refine Phase workshop. SEED’s vision and mission to turn eco-inclusive business ideas into reality is in line with Instellar’s commitment to developing impactful social enterprises. Therefore, in the future we will continue to hold activities that can support social enterprises to develop their business and impact.