Currently I (Putri Amalia) am developing my business in the environmental field that tackles the problem of bottle plastics. Along with my team, we brainstormed how we can solve the plastic problems that exist in Indonesia today. As we know, in Indonesia the level of awareness of plastic waste is very low. Then we came up with Plustreat, a compact reverse vending machine that provides ease for the user to recycle a plastic bottle, especially PET, in seconds, by shredding the plastic bottle into flakes. It will also sort and store plastic flakes based on its color. Besides, it will increase the awareness about the circular economy as well as give experience to the user of a new way of recycling. P+usTreat is a gender-inclusive, fun, and valuable product for all people.
Becoming an entrepreneur is my long life goal, and entrepreneurship is my principle of life. As a girl who grows in a non-entrepreneur family, I like to watch success stories through books and tvs. Hence, to become an entrepreneur, I have to struggle by myself, learning by autodidact about businesses and enterprises. My learning process is also supported by my major, Industrial Engineering which provides knowledge of innovation and business management.
The way I founded PlusTreat also with the help of fellow students that are having the same concern of issue. By committing on this business, we are entrepreneurs that always learn day by day.
The first pitch of PlusTreat is to Growth Hub and we succeed. Growth Hub is our first angel investor. Growth Hub really helps us to realize our dream, support our research and development product to become our very first prototype, and in business aspects such as legality of our business.
Plustreat has a long way to go in business. We still need to develop more products, how to win the market, and scale up the business. In the development process of PlusTreat, Gita provides considerable support. Gita GH gives assistance with funding applications, mentoring, business matching, and facilitates us to meet up with investors and experts.
Since the main goal of PlusTreat is to speed up the recycle chain, our important key impact of PlusTreat is the number of plastics flakes that we collected. The number of collections may increase if we also have many machines around the city, or throughout countries. Plustreat is the first Reverse Vending Machine that exists in Indonesia that has two functions at once, separating plastic bottles based on its color and shred the plastic bottles into flakes. Plustreat provides a new experience for users to do recycling. Make users feel they have done good things to the environment every time and everywhere. Covid-19 has had an impact on the development of Plustreat, with limitations in conducting meetings with teams and mentors, and limited access to do many things. But we try to adapt quickly to the situation, do everything online, and carry out the covid-19 protocol if a meeting is needed. Growth Hub really helps us in providing experts or mentors which gave us a lot of insight to develop our product and our business.