Stakeholder Capitalism

5Globalization

In the summer of 2012, three university students, Annisa, Adi, and Arekha, were in Bandung, West Java. The students shared an entrepreneurial drive and found that their individual talents were natural complements. Annisa was studying economics, Adi architecture, and Arekha biotechnology. Bandung is a sprawling West-Javan city of about 2.5 million people. Despite being home to many creative minds, its action radius was mostly limited to Indonesia itself. Had Annisa, Adi, and Arekha followed in their parents’ footsteps, they would have ended up working as public servants, teachers, or freelance consultants. But their curiosity, ambition, and academic connections to the world beyond Bandung gradually changed their outlook. Soon after meeting, the young trio became student-entrepreneurs: they started as mushroom farmers, aiming to help their fellow countrymen gain food security and selling an edible growing mushroom kit. By 2014, their dream grew even larger: having worked for all these years with mushrooms, they realized the fungi's potential as a sustainable material as well. They wanted to use it to make all-kinds of consumer products and potentially sell it all over the world.

To achieve their dream, the young graduates from Bandung found support abroad. Through an academic contact, the Swiss Institute of Technology (also known as ETH) decided to fund their scientific research and testing. After a few years, 500 Startups, a San Francisco–based venture capital ...