For Fitri, becoming a student in the Communication Science Program at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro (Udinus) is the biggest privilege that she ever felt. Moreover, she utilized much valuable knowledge in her life, especially in planning her career to run a business.

After taking three years of gap year, Fitri’s effort to pursue higher education in college has paid off through her dedication in optimizing every bit of opportunity at college. One of them is participating in a variety of coaching programs as well as business competitions to improve her own business.

In fact, Fitri, a student of the 2022 cohort, attained several achievements such as becoming the winner of Creanovation Udinus and standing on the third-place contender at the Pitching Competition which was held by the Ministry of Cooperative & SME, Indonesia. Through these competitions, she developed her snack business named ‘Djoeragan Jajan.’

At first, Fitri’s involvement in participating competition was encouraged by her lecturer of the technopreneourship course, Zahrotul Umami, M.I.Kom. During the preparation, she made a pitch deck about her business plan to be presented within 5 minutes of duration.

“With the help of experiences that I got from public speaking class last semester, I was able to deliver a good presentation about my business and won third place. Thanks to all of the support from my lecturers and the knowledge that they gave to me, my business is starting to improve,” expressed Fitri.

Fitri, born in 2001, also felt that the learning material at Udinus could be easily implemented in the daily lives of young entrepreneurs. 

“I am currently utilizing the knowledge that I learned at college such as public speaking, technopreneurship, and marketing communication. Although I’m in the third semester of learning at college, I feel that my skills have developed a lot. All of this improvement is because of the encouragement from the supportive lecturers at Udinus,” She revealed.

Her journey to become a young entrepreneur

Fitri runs two kinds of business in food industry, namely ‘Djoeragan jajan’ which focuses on snacks, and ‘cemilan ndud’ focuses on cake. However, she is currently more focused on producing snacks. She has been running that snack business since June 2021 and her first product was Basreng (a crunchy fried meatball with spicy seasoning). Based on recent marketing research, Basreng was one of the most favorable and viral snacks during the pandemic.

“In the beginning, I named my business as ‘Djoeragan Basreng.’ As time went by, I changed it into ‘Djoeragan Jajan’ which means ‘The home of snacks’ having a lot more menu rather than selling Basreng only. The additional menu consists of dried macaroni called makring, fried dumplings called kulpi, dried noodles, crispy chicken skin, egg macaroni called maklor, and chocolate cream puff,” explained Fitri.

Currently, Dojeragan Jajan has been around for 2 years and has an offline store right near Udinus Campus, particularly at Nakula Street 2, No. 8B, Semarang, Indonesia. Every month, Fitri’s business obtains a turnover of around 10 – 11 million rupiah taken from the total selling of her online and offline store as well as the open reseller system.

Fitri, whose hobby is reading, mentioned that there are three important things when managing a business such as intentions, strategies, and goals. With a strong intention, an entrepreneur will not easily give up on developing a business.

“Intention is also supported by the right strategy so that we understand the proper way to utilize any opportunity. Moreover, determining goals will drive an entrepreneur to be more competitive and innovative all the time,” said Fitri.

Furthermore, Fitri also revealed that the ability to think innovatively is very needed when facing obstacles against competitors in the field. According to her, selling a ‘nice’ product in the present era is not enough.

“Entrepreneurs need innovation and different ways of thinking to produce something different or distinct selling method from the majority of people. Thus, having a unique selling point that is more vibrant compared to other products is also important. (Udinus Public Relation/Ika. Photo: Personal Document)