Nadiem Makarim

After graduating from Brown University in 2006, Nadiem decided to come back home to Indonesia and worked at McKinsey & Company. Nadiem worked as a McKinsey consultant for 3 years.[8]

Nadiem became co-founder and managing director for Zalora Indonesia in 2011. In 2012, Nadiem made the decision to leave Zalora to focus on building his own startup, including Gojek, which at that time had 15 employees and 450 drivers. He claims to have learned enough from Zalora, which was his main goal in accepting the position in the first place. In Zalora, Nadiem had the chance to build a mega startup and work with some of the best talents across the region.[9]

After leaving Zalora and while developing Gojek, Nadiem also worked as a chief innovation officer of Kartuku.[10] In the early days, Kartuku didn't have any competition in cashless payment solutions in Indonesia.[9] Kartuku was then acquired by Gojek to strengthen GoPay.[11]

In 2010 Nadiem created Gojek, which is today a decacorn company with a valuation of over US$10 billion.[12] Gojek was first established as a call centre, offering only courier delivery and two-wheeled ride-hailing services. Today, Gojek has transformed into a super app, providing more than 20 services, ranging from transportation, food delivery, groceries, massage, house cleaning, logistics to a cashless digital payment platform called GoPay.[11]

Nadiem often uses a motorcycle taxi, known in Indonesia as an ojek. He saw this as a business opportunity and developed it into Gojek, which is founded in 2010.[13][14]

Gojek was well received, and eventually received US$1,3 billion funding from investors, in a 2018-round led by Alphabet Inc's Google, JD.com Inc and Tencent Holdings. It thereby became the first Indonesian unicorn.[15] By 2019, the firm was worth up to US$10 billion[16]

On 21 October 2019, Gojek announced that Nadiem would leave the company to join president-elect Jokowi's Onward Indonesia Cabinet. His position as CEO was replaced by Gojek group president Andre Soelistyo and Gojek co-founder Kevin Aluwi as co-CEOs.[17] On the second reshuffle of the cabinet, announced at 28 April 2021, he was appointed as the first holder of Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology.[18]

Under Nadiem's tenure as Minister of Education and Culture, a decree prohibiting Indonesian schools from enforcing rules mandating the wearing of religious attire was signed into effect on 3 February 2021. Schools were given 30 days to repeal any rules making the wearing of religious attire compulsory before they would face sanctions. Nadiem supported the ban, stating that whether a person should wear religious clothing is "an individual's right… it is not the school's decision."[19]