Anyone can sell mobile phone vouchers nowadays. The ketoprak seller in Tebet, South Jakarta, even named his cart “Ketoprak.Cell”—ketoprak being the name of the special Jakartan food of rice cakes and bean sprouts with peanuts sauce. Toib (41), or Tommy for his loyal customers, is a proof of how the use of mobile phones has become so prevalent that even road-side food vendors like Toib can easily enter the “open market.”

Toib has been expanding his wares since 2007. He had the idea after a customer asked him to buy a mobile phone voucher for her. He then realized that he could use his savings for his business capital instead of leaving it in the bank and earning a very low interest rate. In a day, Toib can sell around thirty vouchers and gains an extra income of Rp800 thousands to Rp1 million per month.

According to the Indonesian Telecommunication Regulation Agency, there are around 150 million mobile phone users in Indonesia. Naturally, it is not only Toib who profits from the promising market. One can find vendors of cellular phone vouchers in the roadside stalls selling cigarettes; some even selling them using their push-bikes, using a glass box on the back of the bike. Toib, however, is perhaps the only roadside food vendors that use the combination of his wares as his business name: “Ketoprak.Cell.”


Photo by: Ardi Yunanto
Text by: Prodita Sabarini & Ardi Yunanto
Translated by: Rani Elsanti