“A lesson on resilience”

I got introduced to Ralali back in 2015 when the Indonesian SME market was fragmented, unorganised and was yet to explore digitisation. Joseph Aditya, Founder, Chairman, & CEO of the company believed that the best way to empower these SMEs, which contribute to 90% of employment in Indonesia, was to digitise their procurement process so they can focus on their core business. Procurement was a big issue because Indonesia has more than 20,000 inhabited islands and their supply chain had not fully evolved yet. I was impressed by the honesty, simplicity and clarity of Joseph’s vision.

One of the best things about Joseph that caught my eye early on was his commitment to the company vision and the determination to never give up. Ralali went through several ups and downs and a lot of uncertain periods. But the resilient team always came out stronger. Like this one time when they had a major issue with their database, they lost almost 90% of their business in one month while they tried to fix the problem. I trusted Joseph and his team’s capability and I also knew he wanted his space to figure the problem at hand. And rightly so, the problem was solved within a month after that.

Ralali today is empowering the Indonesian SME market through technology and providing these small businesses quick access to products and suppliers. They currently have close to 400,000 SMEs as their customers, which is significant but still a small portion of the overall market. So, in one sense the journey has just started. They have a long way to go but they are successfully digitalising the sourcing and procurement processes for SMEs, while also empowering them to focus on their businesses rather than spend time on operations.

We, at BEENEXT, place an utmost amount of trust in the founder’s vision and determination. The fundamental belief in the founder’s ability to execute is what we really appreciate and nurture. Sometimes we believe in the founders more than they believe in themselves.