The Story of Sri Kusmiati, Founder of Nastar Village in Tangerang, from a Home-Based Cake Venture
Tangerang — Sri Kusmiati’s (62) home-based dry cake venture established in 1997 became the foundation for what is now known as Nastar Village, a home industry cluster located in Gang Merpati, Jalan H. Unus, Larangan Utara, Kecamatan Larangan, Kota Tangerang.
From a modest home kitchen with minimal equipment, Sri gradually developed her dry cake business, which has since evolved not only commercially but also inspired numerous similar entrepreneurs in the surrounding neighbourhood.
Sri recalled the origins of her enterprise. At the outset, she had to borrow an oven from a neighbour and taught herself cake-making through trial and error.
“If I were starting now, it would be easy — you just open YouTube and all the recipes appear. Back then, we had to travel to food centres, we had to read recipes from books,” Sri Kusmiati explained during an interview at her production facility.
To learn, Sri sourced references from recipe books and visited cake supply shops to ask sellers directly.
In the early stages, Sri produced only four types of dry cakes: nastar, sagu, cheese kastengel, and love cakes. Among these, nastar became the customer favourite.
Over time, her business expanded and her products became well-known throughout the neighbourhood. Her production kitchen now produces up to 21 varieties of dry cakes.
“I learn new recipes. I search for chefs, I ask them. I also ask my relatives,” she said.
Sri stated that innovation is key to sustaining her business. This year, she even created a new variant called NKC, short for Nastar Keju Coklat (Nastar Cheese Chocolate).
“When we sell, we must have many ideas. We make something here that doesn’t exist elsewhere,” she explained.
She treats her workers like friends. Even when orders surge, she never implements overtime.
“No, we never have overtime. We always finish at 17:00 WIB and start at 04:00 WIB,” she said.
Production runs six days a week, Monday through Saturday. Sunday is deliberately kept as a rest day so workers can spend time with their families.