Women Entrepreneurs Play Key Role in Indonesia's Economic Movement, Pertamina Takes This Action

Pertamina is encouraging ultra-micro to small women entrepreneurs to advance and become competitive. A total of 3,489 women entrepreneurs from across Indonesia participated in the pre-curation socialisation for the PFpreneur 2026 programme on Kartini Day, conducted online. These are women entrepreneurs who have passed the administrative selection from 8,196 registrants for the PFpreneur 2026 programme. Having passed the selection and entered the pre-curation stage, the selected women entrepreneurs will receive basic business training, particularly on the role as a business founder, customer characteristics, and the value of the products or businesses they run. Pre-curation is the initial stage of the four stages of business strengthening in the PFpreneur 2026 programme, namely pre-curation, curation 1, curation 2, and final curation. Learning in each stage is conducted asynchronously through the PFseries e-learning platform, which contains learning videos as well as assignments in the form of pre-tests and post-tests. The PFpreneur programme’s curriculum is designed progressively, starting from strengthening entrepreneurial mindset and mentality, market and consumer analysis, HR and financial governance, marketing strategies, to sales strategies and digital capacity enhancement. SMEPP Manager of PT Pertamina (Persero), Fety, explained that the PFpreneur programme is part of the company’s commitment to developing a comprehensive and integrated SME mentoring ecosystem. The PFpreneur programme, which focuses on nurturing women entrepreneurs (womenpreneurship), serves as the gateway to the preparation level mentoring that will prepare the assisted partners before scaling up to the on-boarding level mentoring, namely Pertamina UMK Academy, Pertamina SMEXPO, and UMK Go Global. “Women entrepreneurs are modern-day Kartinis who play an important role in driving Indonesia’s economy. For that reason, we have a special programme for women called PFpreneur, which is designed as a basic mentoring programme that will strengthen the foundation of women entrepreneurs before we take them to the next level of SME mentoring in the Pertamina Group, for example, UMK Academy,” said Fety. Initiated by Pertamina Foundation since 2020, the PFpreneur programme has assisted 6,325 women-owned SMEs of various types of businesses, from culinary, fashion, crafts, to agribusiness, to scale up into resilient, independent, creative, and competitive women entrepreneurs. The impact of PFpreneur mentoring is experienced by Rifera, an SME from Sumatera Selatan that offers eco-fashion products such as handbags, bags, and accessories made from wood leather and natural fibres. Starting from a home-based business, Rifera is now mentored by Pertamina Patra Niaga Regional Sumatera Bagian Selatan (Sumbagsel) and successfully attracted attention at the Sumatera Selatan Outstanding Products Exhibition 2026, early April.