Locations#SheDisrupts2023 Startup Stories: Expanding Opportunities for Gardeners through Connective Platform and Capacity Building
June 16, 2023
OkeGarden provides various interactive features, ranging from online consultation, gardening inspiration videos, and even special custom designing services.
As a child, Hadid Fathul Alam –the CEO of OKE Garden– witnessed how his hardworking father struggles as a gardener. Offering services from one house to another, he depended on luck to stumble upon his customers. He was also intrigued when he saw many urban open green spaces in Indonesia were not well taken care of. Inspired by the marketplace he used to sell his father’s gathered plants, he had a vision to build a connective platform bridging the supply and demand of gardening services.
Availability and maintenance of urban open green spaces have been a problem in most densely populated cities in Indonesia. In Jakarta, for instance, only 5.18% of the region’s total area is categorised as open green spaces.[1] Among those, some displays decline in quality – with one of the largest contributors being the lack of proper maintenance. Not only this results in nonoptimal carbon absorption and urban water retention, but research proves there is a positive correlation between lack of maintenance and crime rates within the nearby vicinities of the urban open green space.
Seeing this as a social enterprise opportunity, Hadid and his colleagues established OKE Garden in 2018. The platform serves as an aggregator of gardening services for customers to choose from – ranging from spatial landscaper to small-scale caretakers. OKE Garden does not only democratize access for green space maintenance, but also open larger opportunities for greenskeepers. In addition, the platform also incorporates capacity building to help door-to-door gardeners advance their business by teaching basic customer service standards, bookkeeping, and outreach methods in partnership with local community centers. For the customers, OKE Garden provides various interactive features, ranging from online consultation, gardening inspiration videos, and even special custom designing services.
As a result, OKE Garden gained positive traction from its market, and was able to empower many. An example is Yadi, a gardener with elementary school qualification who used to make IDR50,000 a day serving 1-2 client a day. After collaborating with Oke Garden for three years, he managed to gain IDR10 million capital per month, and turn his solo service into an enterprise by being the middleman for 11 other plant nurseries.
OkeGarden does not only democratize access for green space maintenance, but also open larger opportunities for greenskeepers.
In expanding his social enterprise, Hadid is supported by many, including Pralampita, the CPO (Chief Product Officer) of OKE Garden joining the SheDisrupts Indonesia – a venture competition and pre-acceleration programme focusing on women-led ventures and ventures with women beneficiaries. The program was launched by Creatella Impact, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Moonshot Ventures, UN Women, Monks Hill Ventures and UNDP through ASSIST JP supported by Joint SDG Fund.
She was thrilled to join the program because previously, she has never partaken in women-empowerment specific accelerators. The involvement of notable experts throughout the SDI’s conduct sparked her interest even further – as she thought the provided curriculum would help OKE Garden cater to a larger impact, especially in incorporating gender-nuanced agenda to the enterprise’s mission.
Pralampita agreed that this programme had helped her immensely in devising ways of upscaling OKE Garden. She also added that she found the sessions highly insightful, especially on the impact measurement and management.
“I felt very enlightened due to the very substantive session, especially ones that taught product deck construction and development, gender equity, and impact measurement and management. As a result, we became aware of highlighting gender composition of both our beneficiaries and our team” She uttered.
She also added that now, the enterprise is more aware of ways to measure and direct their impact towards the SDGs and put the goals as a baseline to further strategize their business. The company has been contributing to the achievement of three SDGs. First is SDG 8 on ensuring decent work and economic growth since they provide gardeners with a clear career path and increasing their productivity. Second is SDG 13 on Climate Action, as the maintenance of green public space could increase absorption of carbon footprints and retention of water. Lastly, provision of education by providing intensive IT training for 200+ vocational graduates, focusing on the landscape design curriculum – enhancing the fulfilment of SDG 4.
Looking ahead, OKE Garden aims to build a larger community of green landscape enthusiasts by collaborating with campuses with related majors. These community centers are also expected to close the segmentation between academia and practitioners and enable the two to collaborate and empower each other.
OKE Garden is accessible through web services (okegarden.com) for customers in Jabodetabek, West Java, and East Java region for direct garden maintenance service. They also accept online gardening consultations.
Written by Fathi Arsadipura and Adzraa Shaffa Andira (Innovative Financing Lab, UNDP Indonesia)
Edited by Enggi Dewanti
