Hobbies as sources of income are everyone’s dream and it is not uncommon to see such things nowadays. Mahdi Zalfa Muhammad, a student from the Communication Study Program at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro, had a hobby that also served as his source of income.

Thanks to his childhood hobby, Mahdi was able to earn his income. Alongside his father, Mahdi successfully established a koi business in Semarang with ‘Lesanpuro Koi’ as its name. He said that fish had been his object of liking since his childhood days. However, he never thought that his fondness for fish would turn into a business. Koi was Mahdi’s first favorite kind of fish, which marked his eventual business foundation and it keeps developing to this day.

 “Initially, I put fish in the aquarium in the living room, thence my parents began to like fish. Eventually, I added koi into the aquarium, and in the end, we built a fish pond on the upper floor,” Mahdi said.

In 2010, Mahdi finally decided to establish his own koi business, alongside his father. Their business served as a pioneer of koi business in Semarang. At that time, the marketing was limited to only Mahdi’s friends.

“At first, only a few people were fond of koi. When the marketing was done through Blackberry, we only uploaded images, as time went on, we started to use Facebook as our marketing method to expand our business,” he explained.

Mahdi, born on November 12th, 2004, encountered many obstacles in running his business. He said that he had tried to cultivate koi alongside his parents, but the result did not meet his expectation. According to Mahdi, cultivating koi required a high level of persistence. For that reason, he only focused on being a koi dealer in Semarang.

“I have tried cultivating koi in Magelang, but the result was not satisfying. There were roughly 15.000 fingerlings and only 0.01 percent come out as qualified,” he explained.

Having run his business for more than a decade, he had met his customers from various backgrounds including, regular koi enthusiasts, government officials, and hotels. Not only did Mahdi have customers from Semarang, but his business attracted customers from other different parts of Indonesia.

“Excluding customers from Java Island, most of my customers came from Pontianak, Balikpapan, and Bali. By running this business, I usually get roughly Rp. 3-7 million of income,” Mahdi uttered.

Mahdi hoped that the business he established with his family would get larger and more famous in society. He even intended to concentrate on Business Communication in the Communication Study Program at Udinus in an attempt to develop his business even further.

“I want to add some new facilities including, ponds, aquariums, etc, as the facilities are still lacking at the moment, I hope this business always keeps developing,” he concluded. (Humas Udinus/Alex. Foto: Dok. Pribadi)