Afta B-ionik is a company that invented affordable prosthetics controlled by brainwaves for those whose arms and legs are disabled due to their genetics, accidents, or paralysis. With their business, they want to empower the disabled in Indonesia with their affordable products. With his mechanical engineering background, Arifin Julian started the company after after he graduated from the University of Indonesia.
For more information about Afta Bionik, please click here.
Hello Arifin, can you tell us shorty about yourself and how did you start the business?
It was started from a research I initiated. I received an offer to collaborate with Australian disability community at an international robotic forum to create a technology for people with paraplegia (a paralysis that causes someone to lose their control of upper and lower limbs), but I was unable to fulfill the request because I need to complete another research. However, I started to move to study technological developments for disability afterwards. I was surprised when I found out that the number of disabilities in Indonesia was very large. It reached 9 million people in 2015 specifically within the category of people with disabled limbs. However, prosthetics were very expensive as it could reach the price of IDR 30 million for prosthetic legs and IDR 600 million for prosthetic arms. This problem explained the low number of the prosthetic users. At that time, I can only find one person who could afford a prosthetic limb, the name is Pak Siswandi.
According to the findings, I began the research with the help of my best friend, Muhammad Yusuf Abdurahman, who has previous experiences in plastic manufacture. The research was also guided by Agung Shamsuddin Saragih, a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering UI. This research has also won awards from national to international and published in various national media. From these media exposures, there has been a lot of demand to commercialize our products. Because of this, we invited Yusuf’s close friend Aulia Fitria Ulfah to join us due to her background in business and experience in social development.
Who was involved and what inspired you?
Since its inception, we have been supported by the Directorate of Innovation and Business Incubator UI. We are also greatly assisted by Dr. Fitri Anesherita who led the Medical Rehab department at the RSCM, and Fakhri Rekha Utama who is a prosthetist and orthotist at the RSUI. Our social campaign is also supported by the campaign.com team and @atamerica.
We met a lot of people from the medical field and the disabled community. After so many discussions, they really put hope in our team to continue growing and provide various kinds of local medical devices that are affordable compared to the majority of imported products available in the market. Their wish and hope are what inspires us to move forward in our aspirations to become an impactful company that could produce high-end medical technology in the country.
Now, some students are also willing to participate in assisting the development of our research. There are UI students at the Research Center for Biomedical Engineering under the guidance of Agung Shamsuddin Saragih for his engineering field and also ITS students at the Integrated Digital Design Research Center for Medical under the guidance of Djoko Kuswanto for the design of its products.
What is your vision in this business and why did you decide to commit to this business?
Our motto is “change disability into ability”. It is manifested in the form of our affordable medical devices so that we can reach wider segments of people with disabilities in our own country without being dependent on imported medical devices. We hope that the disabled community can finally carry out their daily activities and become more productive. This will help them to be independent in supporting themselves and making a living. This motto is also our vision and commitment going forward.
Are there any strategies to develop your business two years from now? Tell us a bit more!
We will continue to make progress in terms of research, manufacturing, and business. On the research side, there are many demands for new products requested by the medical experts we met. Together with teams from UI and ITS, we are committed to continuing our innovation to be able to produce product innovation at least one new product every year.
In manufacturing, we are trying to create a small factory for mass manufacture. It is important as we need to manage our production costs while improving product quality and speed. Our main goal is to produce more affordable devices for the middle class who are using BPJS facilities. Currently, BPJS only covers the cost of prosthetic devices at IDR 3.5 million.
In terms of business, we will continue to partner with more class A hospitals to distribute our products. We hope this partnership will also create programs in collaboration with the company’s CSR and crowdfunding.
What kind of support do you need from the ecosystem (e.g investors) and the government to develop your business?
We would like to get access to more strategic partners. In addition, we need to find investors who can also be our business mentors with the same passion in health & medical industry, learn together and add to our team’s expertise on the business side. For the government, we need to partner with other government bodies and to gain support related to the regulations of medical devices. We hope this will push our business growth by focusing on a certain national standard compliance in Indonesia.
Are you fundraising to develop your business? What do you need funds for?
We need to scale up our business. To date, we are only using a laboratory for the production. We will need to rent warehouses and buy manufacturing equipment to improve quality production line, increase production capacity, cost efficiency, and increase the speed of production.
We also need the funding to obtain certification (e.g. SNI), research & development, and business operations, mainly in sales and marketing.
Are there any strategies to develop your business two years from now? Tell us a bit more!
We will continue to make progress in terms of research, manufacturing, and business. On the research side, there are many demands for new products requested by the medical experts we met. Together with teams from UI and ITS, we are committed to continuing our innovation to be able to produce product innovation at least one new product every year.
In manufacturing, we are trying to create a small factory for mass manufacture so production costs can be more stable while improving product quality and speed. Our main goal is to make our product more affordable for the middle class who are using BPJS facilities. Currently, BPJS only covers the cost of prosthetic devices at IDR 3.5 million.
In terms of business, we will continue to improve relations to various class A hospitals in Indonesia to facilitate product distribution channels. We hope this partnership will also create programs in collaboration with the company’s CSR and crowdfunding.
What kind of support do you need from the ecosystem (e.g investors) and the government to develop your business?
We would want to get access to other ministries or related agencies in order to form a partnership, we also need to find investors who can also be our business mentors with the same passion in health & medical industry, learn together and add to our team’s expertise on the business side. For the government, we need support related to the regulations of medical devices so this business can continue to grow by following a certain national standard in Indonesia.
Are you fundraising to develop your business? What do you need funds for?
All this time we are only using a laboratory for the production, therefore we need to scale our business where we should rent warehouses and buy manufacturing equipment where it can create higher quality production line, increase production capacity, cost efficiency, and increase the speed of production.
We also need funds for certification and regulation such as SNI and research & development of other medical device products that have huge demands in Indonesia, and business operations mainly in sales and marketing.
ANGIN x KUKM Spotlight is a part of “ANGIN x KUKM Training in Pitching and Access to Funding for SMEs”, a collaboration between ANGIN and the Ministry of Cooperation and SMEs. In this spotlight, we aim to share stories about the selected local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to public and ecosystem players within ANGIN’s network (organizations, key players, investors, development agencies, government, etc). We are hoping that this spotlight can lead to potential collaboration in growing the entrepreneurship ecosystem, including SME development.
