Want to expand your micro-business in Indonesia? There may soon be an app for that.
Last week eBay announced its collaboration with the Grameen Foundation, a global non-profit group, to design and launch two mobile technology solutions in the Indonesian province of West Java.
The 18-month-long project, which officially started last month, is a branch off of the Mobile Microfranchising Initiative — an existing Grameen effort that provides mobile phones to micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries.
This new initiative, said eBay Head of Global Social Innovation Lauren Moore, will aim to produce both a mobile transaction system and mobile marketplace for the existing entrepreneurs and community members in the region.
“We (eBay) held a competition last year, called the Opportunity Project, where we looked for some of the best ideas around the world,” she said. “Grameen proposed this idea to us of creating mobile applications for small business owners in Indonesia.”
The original Grameen project, she said, focused on women — around 10,000 of them — in local villages who were selling air time minutes for cell phones. Seeing the potential from that, they saw an opportunity to expand in the community what they were able to do by creating mobile applications.
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