Innovation

Yuri Pratama and his colleagues in Urchindonesia transformed the urchin from what was originally considered marine waste into a valuable product.

Moreover, with existing business processes, Urchindonesia helps the local fishing community in Kepulauan Seribu to provide sustainable urchin as a product. Also, Urchindonesia is present in Kepulauan Seribu as a definitive urchin market for the local fishing community in Kepulauan Seribu.

Urchindonesia educates local fishermen so that they can cultivate urchin and also buys urchin from those fishermen at a good price so that they can eventually become economically independent.

Inspiration

Before founding Urchindonesia, Yuri Pratama was an entrepreneur in ecotourism. At that time, urchin was considered marine waste by the people of Kepulauan Seribu. They would burn or bury the sea urchin. Out of curiosity, Yuri did a simple study of the benefits of urchin and its potential in Indonesia.

Based on this research, he saw that there was a huge potential for urchin in Indonesia compared with the largest urchin producers, such as Japan and the United States. However, at that time (2009) there were no companies that used urchin on a large scale, and even the government (through the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries) had not been aware of the potential.

With all the courage he had, Yuri finally took a small step to develop urchin in Kepulauan Seribu through working with the community. According to him, "Success starts from one small step, and success is not about how much you have but how much meaning you give to your community."

Overall impact

There are three overall impacts from the innovations in the urchin business model: access to the product, access to a market, and access to financial support.

Access to product means that the local fishing community in Kepulauan Seribu will always be ready to provide the product because they are trained and assisted by Urchindonesia as an expert in urchin. At the same time, Urchindonesia becomes the first market in the production and trade of sea urchins in Indonesia.

Finally, the innovation creates a sustainable business for the urchin and will lead to access to financial support for both the local fishing community and Urchindonesia itself.

Business benefit

In 2009, the business of urchin was very unfamiliar. No one was in this business; even the Indonesian government was not interested in developing sea urchin.

Now, however, many small-scale investors have been developing urchin businesses in Indonesia, and hopefully in the future there will be large-scale investment from developed countries like Japan and the United States for urchin business development.

In the end, the development of the urchin industry will greatly help the fishing community and the development of the fishing industry in general.

Social and environmental benefit

For the community, of course the innovation of Urchindonesia has a significant financial impact. This can be seen from the following illustration: A 300 g urchin can produce 25% – 35% of its total weight. One harvest can provide about 80 kg – 100 kg of urchin. For lower quality urchin (generally sold in dry form), urchin is priced at IDR 180,000 – IDR 230,000 per kg. The maximum amount of urchin in one harvest is up to 300 kg. As this calculation shows, during harvest time the local fishing community can earn IDR 69,000,000. One year of sea urchin cultivation can produce as much as 2–3 times by harvest time.

As for the environment, this innovation supports SDG 14, Life Below Water. Considering that sea urchins are a parasite of coral reefs, the cultivation of sea urchins will clean the coral reefs from this parasite.

Interview

Yuri Pratama Widyana, Co-Founder