Tanjung, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - Dapur Pepaya, a snack entrepreneur from Juai Village in Tabalong District, South Kalimantan, won the gold award in Existing Business category at Adaro Spectapreneur 2025 recently.
She also received Rp10 million in business funding for product development and marketing.
Eka, the owner of Dapur Pepaya, expressed her gratitude that her hard work and consistency have now paid off.
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Eka's consistent success in transforming local fruit into economically valuable snacks was driven by the abundance of papaya in Juai village.
Through her home-based business, Dapur Pepaya, she offered innovative products such as sukade, chips, and papaya floss under the Decustile brand.
“Papayas were abundant in Juai at that time, prices were quite cheap. It would be a pitty to let them go, so I tried processisng them into snacks,” said Eka, who took the name Decustile from kustila, the local Banjar word for papaya.
Once, her business journey was hampered because of limited equipment, until she received support from PT Adaro Indonesia through its CSR program in 2023.
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“After being assisted with tools, training and mentoring from Adaro, I became even more enthusiastic. I was delighted that there is a company who care about small business like ours,” she said.
Now, Decustile products are gaining recognition at various regional entrepreneural events.
Eka continues to improve her packaging and marketing strategy, so that her products can penetrate markets outside Kalimantan. Besides being an entrepreneur, she also active as cadre of PKK (Family Empowerment and Welfare Movement) and PHBS (Clean and Healthy Living Behavior) in her village.
Eka's perseverance is proof that from a simple kitchen in a village, local fruit can be processed into valuable products and open up new economic opportunities for surrounding community.
