BossQ, are you currently part of a community?

Almost every human being is part of at least one community in their daily lives. Community is an inseparable part of our lives as social creatures. Humans need relationships with other people to fulfill their various needs. As the famous saying goes, "If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk together." Therefore, associations are created in society based on the environment where they live, interests, goals, needs, and various living conditions that are more or less similar.

From year to year, communities are widely used as a means of human empowerment. Kompas explains that community is a personal and social process that provides free space to hone personal abilities, creativity and freedom of action. Usually, community empowerment is directed at increasing human resource capabilities, for example through improving the quality of education, health, alleviating poverty, and various social inequalities. There are so many simple examples around us, starting from the history activist community, mental health, small businesses, religious activities, book readers, and many more. On a large scale, we can also see the existence of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which focus on empowering communities to solve a number of problems in society, from the smallest to quite large problems.

Why is this community so necessary? Apart from the fact that humans cannot live alone, there are various benefits provided by this social group. Two of them are a means of providing mutual motivation between individuals and improving life in the economic and social fields. With the active participation of each member involved, the community is able to realize its respective ultimate goals, which usually is to produce a society that is independent and empowered for others.

In this digital era, communities seem to be growing much more rapidly. Technology allows us to more easily connect and reach each other even though we don't know each other or live in close proximity to each other. With the same needs or interests, communities can be created online or virtually. For example, Kaskus, the number one virtual world community forum in Indonesia where millions of people gather to discuss their various hobbies.

With the big goal of creating an empowered society, companies and brands are also increasingly looking towards communities. Apart from the noble task of empowering society, CoHive explained that brands can utilize the community to become a marketing channel with high engagement, a source of information related to developing trends, as well as a means of feedback to improve business quality. So, actually the existence of a community that runs optimally can benefit various parties on a fairly large scale.

This is what Bukalapak does through the community of business people it fosters.

Hot Meeting to Advance MSME Owners

Bukalapak has a belief that the spirit of community is what unifies MSME owners, who are often called pelapak. From here, Bulapak Community was created, which is a forum for sellers and buyers to be able to discuss, exchange ideas, share experiences, and learn about tips and tricks for buying and selling online at Bukalapak. This community was established to be a forum for MSME owners to interact directly with fellow members so that they can be successful together.

In its journey, this community regularly holds ground coffee in various regions in Indonesia to share experiences and insights in increasing sales for each business actor. With more than 100,000 members spread across hundreds of cities and regencies in Indonesia, this MSME pelapak association carries out activities to share knowledge, increase friendship networks, and increase potential business partners by upholding the principle of "Increase Knowledge, Sell Sales."

In Banten, the Bukalapak Community was built on the strength of communication patterns that are strong in integrity and solidarity with each other. The Bukalapak Banten Community was founded around 2014 with Om Hakiki as the field coordinator. In this community, there is no fear for individual members to open up about their respective businesses, because similar to the values ​​of the community as a whole, their principle is to reduce competition and increase collaboration in order to advance the hawker community in Banten.

The Qasir team represented by Antony Kurniawan (Regional Sales Manager Qasir), Faiz Kamal (Community Officer Qasir), and Willman Candra and Aditya Dharma (Coach Qasir) had a valuable opportunity to share information about the Qasir application at the Kopi Darat event Bukalapak Banten. On 29 September 2019, this event was held at the house of Tante Mitia, one of the Srikandi members of the Bukalapak Banten Community. It was warm, the event started with a sharing session between fellow entrepreneurs. Om Hakiki hosted the event as MC and Om Hendra Wijaya was the Champion Champion who was the speaker in this activity.

Om Hendra shares the story of his business journey towards success as a seller of various clocks and calculators which are now large in the Banten area. The long road he has traveled illustrates that it is not easy to build a business that was started from zero to produce results. The enthusiasm of the other sellers was also built, which was clearly seen from the many questions asked of Uncle Hendra and Uncle Hakiki.

After ishoma and lunch together, the activity agenda continued to a talk and chat session with the Qasir Team, which nicely started with Uncle Hakiki's story about his experience using the Qasir application. "This application is very helpful in running a business, especially for recording all transactions," explained Om Hakiki. He did not hesitate to recommend Qasir to traders in Banten and throughout Indonesia.

Aside from taking part in these community gatherings, Qasir himself also often holds a number of hang out events as well as QTalks or workshops with Indonesian MSME owners. Qasir's mission is to consistently empower MSMEs through technology to provide equal economic opportunities. Through a cashier application to record sales, manage stock and monitor business transactions, Qasir's main focus is the ecosystem that supports MSMEs in Indonesia so that business activities can run more effectively, efficiently and productively. It is not surprising that at this ground coffee event, the Qasir Team was able to easily touch and build relationships with the MSME owners who attended. The complete features in this multi-purpose cashier application can certainly provide great benefits for their personal business. The participants looked very serious and concentrated when Faiz gave an example of using the Qasir application. Meanwhile, other travelers tried directly using the Qasir application with the help of Antony, Willman, and Adit.

The ground coffee activity closed sweetly with an exchange of souvenirs between the Qasir Team and the Bukalapak Banten Community. Both parties were also enthusiastic about taking photos together as a form of memory. After the activity, the MSME owners stated that they hoped that the communication and friendship between the Bukalapak Banten Community and Qasir could continue in the future because they felt that the Qasir application was very helpful in running their respective businesses.

Qasir's big dream is for you, Indonesian MSME warriors, to have equal facilities and opportunities to support the success of your business so that you can move forward together. Through activities independently and in collaboration with various parties such as BukaLapak, we are slowly moving together towards that big dream.

Interested in joining? Do you want to feel like you have a comrade in arms to share the joys and sorrows of running a business? There are still lots of exciting activities coming up for you, so next time there's another gathering with Qasir, lock your schedule and join in straight away!