1. Please tell us about EMURGO and your role at EMURGO’s Indonesia unit.
EMURGO Group is a global blockchain solutions provider & a founding entity of Cardano blockchain – a globally recognized blockchain platform. EMURGO develops enterprise-grade applications, builds developer tools, invests in startups, and provides blockchain education. EMURGO has offices and manages projects in Singapore, Japan, the USA, India, and Indonesia.
As the CEO of EMURGO Indonesia, I lead our local Indonesian unit’s strategic focus to drive blockchain integration into regional enterprises & organizations. Our local unit also focuses on providing blockchain education courses in partnership with domestic universities to train our future pioneers on the transformative benefits of blockchain technology for both the public & private sectors.Fintech News
2. Can you tell us about your journey into the blockchain industry?
I have been involved in the blockchain industry since the early days starting with a personal interest in first-generation blockchain (Bitcoin) and the unique properties of its underlying blockchain technology. Soon afterwards, I researched and came to learn about Cardano – a third-generation blockchain that evolved out of a research-first approach and addresses the issues of previous blockchain generations. I started networking with initial members of EMURGO and joined EMURGO in 2017.
3. How do you think blockchain is upgrading enterprises?
Blockchain technology is still in a nascent phase of its development. However, global consulting firms have conducted surveys with an overwhelming majority of global senior business executives responding that blockchain solutions have a compelling use case and will be important in the years to come.
Data systems are still very centralized and outdated using technology from years past. Thus, many large enterprises have already entered the blockchain space through completed proof-of-concepts and live integration of blockchain to address a wide variety of use cases from tracking diamonds to coffee beans. Blockchain offers an improved way to shed transparency, provide data immutability, and automate the entry of data, among other benefits.
Thus, EMURGO is helping to educate the general public on the benefits of blockchain technology with our consistent free blog content and offering online/offline blockchain education courses through EMURGO Education including our own Foundations of
Blockchain course which is designed to help students gain blockchain proficiency by time of course completion.
4. Recently we covered news about the launch of EMURGO Traceability Solution, can you share some more details about this solution?
EMURGO Traceability Solution is a blockchain-based solution tailored to bring value-added benefits to enterprises & organizations, in particular those offering premium products in the consumer marketplace. This modern solution allows enterprises to gain added value by openly verifying the quality superiority of their premium products and thereby bringing enterprises enhanced consumer trust. EMURGO Traceability Solution does this by shedding transparency and verifying supply chain best practices including quality assurance, premium ingredient sourcing, and certification labeling data, among other processes.
EMURGO Traceability Solution comes in the form of a simple application that leverages blockchain technology on the back end with an user-friendly UI on the front end. Each stakeholder in the supply chain inputs data into the application upon the transaction & transfer of product goods from one stakeholder to another. This data including time & date, purchasing price, and other details, is immediately stored in the blockchain and can be verified by any stakeholder at any time.
This solution can also be tailored to various supply chain industries according to the industry-specific needs of stakeholders.
5. What feature of EMURGO Traceability Solution differentiates it in the market?
Currently, the traditional existing traceability methods used in supply chains are opaque and inefficient primarily due to the complexity of the supply chain which includes companies of different sizes from different locations spread throughout the world, physical geographic complexities, etc. Some of these methods are still paper-based and outdated using legacy tracking systems.
For example, Indonesia is ranked 4th globally in terms of coffee production, and according to a World Bank report, around 10 million people in Indonesia are economically involved in the coffee industry as a stakeholder in some manner. However, 96% of the coffee produced is by small farmers lacking technological resources & receiving weak government support to properly benefit from this boom. This huge market made up of a very fragmented network of small farmers, roasters, processors, logistics companies, and others, highlights the necessity for technological blockchain solutions to embed trust and transparency in the supply chain to verifiably certify the quality of specifically sourced coffee beans.
Other examples around the world include some consumer goods & luxury goods that are susceptible to counterfeiting due to a lack of secure verification methods; white labeled products that are disguised under other brands due to a lack of efficient traceability methods; mislabeled foods products that are sold to consumers; and illegally sourced materials that are sometimes present in common household goods, among other issues in today’s supply chain industries.
EMURGO Traceability Solution is designed to address these exact issues and add value by securely verifying the origin of a product or good, shed transparency on relevant data such as purchasing prices & stakeholder information, and verifiably track the path of that product or good up the supply chain. This will bring trust to the consumer and thereby add increased brand value to participating enterprises.
6. Can you tell us about other EMURGO products?
EMURGO has already developed and launched three products: Yoroi Wallet, Seiza Cardano Blockchain Explorer, & Tangata Manu, in addition to our latest EMURGO Traceability Solution.
Yoroi Wallet is a light-client wallet for Cardano ADA users that is specifically designed to be simple, fast, and secure – a financial gateway to the future. Yoroi is fully functional and available for free download on iOS, Android, Chrome, & Firefox extension. Users can easily and securely send & receive ADA via Yoroi Wallet.
Seiza Cardano Blockchain Explorer is a blockchain search engine tool that allows Cardano ADA users to track their ADA transactions and other vital information related to the Cardano blockchain including wallet histories, addresses, block size, and stake pools, among others. It tells the story behind the evolution of the Cardano blockchain as it develops into a fully decentralized platform.
Tangata Manu is EMURGO’s third product release and is a new fully open source codebase library for third party developers & enterprises to create their own secure light wallets and explorers for Cardano ADA on Internet browsers and mobile devices.
Please visit our website at www.emurgo.io to learn more about our solutions products.
7. What advice would you like to give to technology startups?
Technology is always developing and providing solutions for things consumers need.
Startups should find an inefficiency and think of a simple consumer-friendly solution that would leave a good impression with prospective consumers.
Blockchain technology is developing fast and is still a relatively new concept for many enterprises. There are opportunities out there for entrepreneurs to leverage blockchain to address inefficiencies caused by centralized data storage and others.
EMURGO Education is our education unit focused on providing blockchain education for developers and career professionals to benefit from blockchain proficiency. These courses provide career upskilling and equip developers with the knowledge needed to build their own solutions.
8. What are some major developments that you are planning?
EMURGO Group and all of our business units are focused on providing blockchain solutions for real enterprise use cases. Our partnership to integrate our solution into Blue
Korintji Coffee’s supply chain was our initial launch of enterprise-facing solutions and we will continue to expand the provision of our tailored blockchain solutions to address supply chain inefficiencies.
9. What kinds of consumers do you target?
EMURGO Group is interested in working with global & local enterprises and organizations that want to implement blockchain solutions to make their business verticals more efficient and optimized for an increasingly data-driven business era.
At EMURGO Indonesia, we are focusing on offering our Traceability Solution and other tailored solutions to regional enterprises that would benefit from greater efficiency in their supply chains. More than 10 million people in Indonesia are economically involved with the local coffee industry in one way or another. Small farmers totaling nearly 2 million are responsible for 96% of the coffee production in Indonesia. To start, 38 farmers are using our EMURGO Traceability Solution to track their bean production up the supply chain. In the Kerinci region alone where we are launching this solution, there are more than 500 local farmers. Once all the stakeholders get used to the process, then we plan to expand gradually so that all the farmers in the region will be able to use the system. We believe there is much room to grow and increase the usage of our solution to solve a common issue.
10. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
EMURGO Group has over 70 team members working in more than 8 countries across the world. At EMURGO, we highly believe in a decentralized and international workforce with a presence in several different markets.
Our local Indonesian unit has 5 dedicated team members working on online & offline local marketing efforts to increase our awareness & of our blockchain solutions.
11. We have heard that you have a very joyful work culture, so can you share with us some fun pictures of your workplace?
