MM6053 - Product Development Management

Selina Astiri
29120184
Executive MBA ITB

Lesson Learnt of Guest Lecturer Session:

Mahorahora Bumi Nusantara

I. Guest Lecturer Profile

Slamet Sudijono studied Mechanical Engineering at Institut Teknologi
Bandung (ITB), Indonesia, and took his Master in Industrial
Management at KU Leuven, Belgium. He then spent nine years in
Unilever Indonesia and another nine years in Banks. He worked as
Digital and Marketing Director at The Body Shop Indonesia before he
decided to start Mahorahora Bumi Nusantara with his classmate
Nonda Muldani. He’s passionate in bringing up farmers, communities
and small medium enterprises to the next level. Leveraging his marketing and commercial background,
he enjoys building brand, improving product quality, expanding market, establishing horizontal and
vertical collaboration that would help products well accepted by the world.

II. Company Profile

Mahorahora Bumi Nusantara is a sociopreneur start-up founded in 2020 engaging in agriculture and
focusing on empowering farmers and communities to produce quality products well accepted in the local
and global market.

Mahorahora was built to actively empower farmers and communities through advanced agricultural
products and provide added value in all supply chains to help improve and equalize the Indonesian
economy. Mahorahora also aims to provide indulging products with healthier benefits.

The company has a social mission to escalate the economic level of Indonesian farmersis by providing
quality products with strong brands that are sold through big markets and broad distribution channels.

III. Products Overview

Mahorahora produces grade “A” Palm Sugar which is pure,

organic, and made from good quality arenga sap. The
characteristics of the sugar contain low water, high solubility, and
fine grain. The products are natural without any refinery
processing. It is claimed to be healthier because it has a low
Glycemic Index of 35-42 that does not cause blood sugar spikes,
complete with vitamin B5 and minerals.

Not only premium in terms of material, Mahorahora Palm Sugar

is sold in a practical and hygienic packaging. The palm sugar is
sold in liquid and powdered form. For the powdered palm sugar,
there are 4 package sizes starting from 150gr, 250gr, 500gr, to 1kg. For the liquid, there are 350ml and 1
litre sizes of bottle.

IV. Product Development Process

➢ Market Potential
In developing its product, Mahorahora always begins with customer insight. They saw a market
opportunity in the Indonesian market where white sugar is heavily consumed, with a total of 7 million
kilograms annually, yet only half are locally produced. On the other hand, white sugar is known to have
negative sides for health in many aspects, such as obesity and promoting loss of calcium from the body.
The healthier alternative of sweetener is Palm sugar which is usually used in traditional food and drink.
But around 2019, there is a beverage trend in the country which is Palm sugar coffee which proved that
Palm sugar is likeable and could be used in non traditional food and beverage. Unfortunately, there is no
pure Palm sugar that is sold in the market. This is a business opportunity that is seen by the founders of
Mahorahora, which is to produce locally made pure and organic Palm sugar.

➢ Involving Social Value

As a sociopreneur start-up, Mahorahora also has to put an effort to meet the interest of the community,
not just to maximize personal gain. Mahorahora sees that local farmers usually have a poor economic
condition, because of the low selling price. This condition has made young farmers shift occupation to
get better income, and threatens the future of Indonesia as an agricultural country.

To be socially responsible, Mahorahora established partnership with three Kelompok Tani and Gabungan
Kelompok Tani with total members of 144 farmers in West Java where they supply the raw material in
bulk and perform fair trade.

➢ Sales Review
For Mahorahora, product development is an iterative process that should have never ended. As a new
business, customer suggestions are listened to, and sales reviews are reviewed to take the next action on
developing the product. Mahorahora opens to innovation until the moment of truth, as Slamet stated.
He explained two cases of product development based on sales review in his business:

- Redevelopment of Packaging Design

 Mahorahora Previous Packaging

When Mahorahora’s sales at offline stores remained unimpressive, Slamet and his team
inspected the root cause and it was found that the product’s visibility on shelf was inferior. Although it is
still better than competitor’s packaging, at offline stores they compete not only with direct competitors
but with other product categories which are produced by major food factories and have more interesting
packaging. As an evaluation, Mahorahora redevelops their packaging design to make their product more
attractive in offline stores.

New Packaging Design

- The Development of Liquid Palm Sugar

In the early days, Mahorahora only produced Palm sugar in powdered form. After successfully
attracting loyal customers, they listen to the expectation of the customers to produce liquid
Palm sugar. This request was taken into action. Mahorahora then developed Liquid Palm sugar
with 3 sizes of bottle with small quantity to get insight of the best selling bottle size for further
development and mass production. It turns out that 350 ml sold fastest in Shopee, while the 1
litre bottle solf fastest in Tokopedia. Mahorahora learned that Shopee customers are usually
individuals which use their product for house kitchen, meanwhile Tokopedia customers are
beverage businesses, mainly coffee shops. With two types of major customers identified, B2C
and B2B, Mahorahora produced both bottle sizes for the next action.

➢ Quality Control
As the only organic Palm sugar brand in Indonesia, Mahorahora put quality control as one of the most
important and highest priority in developing their product. The QC process follows Agriculture Minister
Regulation No. 64/Pemetaan/OT.140/5/2013 about Organic Farming System.
 V. Comparison Between Mahorahora and Unilever Product Development

Slamet reflected on his experience working at Unilever and concluded that the conventional product
development process at Unilever is not applicable to his new business. At Unilever, the development
team begins by putting ideas on board and presenting it to the manager. Through the iteration process,
the team will choose one idea to be produced. Then, the product review will be performed in a 3 months
or 6 months span.

Meanwhile in leading Mahorahora, Slamet himself is the highest leader yet the one who came up with
the product idea. Thus, he mainly followed customer insight and intuition in developing products.

The similarity between Mahorahora and Unilever is the openness to innovation. At Unilever, product
relaunching is a must, no matter how small the innovation is. Take example of Unilever's toothpaste
product, at least in a year, the company innovates on packaging if there is no innovation in the
toothbrush taste and feature. As a new business, Mahorahora performs an iterative process in
developing products as well.

Both businesses, the new one yet the global scale one, believe that innovation should be a never ending
process in order to stay relevant and attractive in the market.