CEO of PT Blue Bird Tbk and Angel Investor
Noni has learnt to stand out in a room full of suits. In addition to being CEO in a male-dominated industry, she is also a gender-aware angel investor and business mentor, determined to support more women who sit on the rear passenger seats to start taking the wheel.
Noni is not just driving the car, she is running an empire of them. President-Director of Blue Bird Group, Indonesia’s largest taxi operator, Noni oversees a fleet of 30,000 cabs across the country and the entire group’s land-transport portfolio, ranging from limousine and car rental to charter bus services. Blue Bird was founded almost 50 years ago by her grandmother, in the family’s garage in Jakarta, after Noni’s grandfather passed away. Noni was 3 years old at the time. Her grandmother sought ways to supplement her income and seized the opportunity of new taxi licensing openings. Noni grew up in the middle of car workshops, helping around as a child and working part-time for the family business during high school holidays.
Noni later studied industrial engineering in Newcastle to grasp the operational aspects of the family’s industry. Being one of only four girls in a class of 180, made her realise that she belonged to a minority in this field. When she later completed her studies with a MBA in finance and marketing, she realised her life strategy from there on: Marketing 101, or how to use differentiation as a powerful competitive tool. BlueBird’s marketing approach truly stands out from the stereotyped automotive industry standards, avoiding the placement of women as glamorous accessories. Instead, the BlueBird website features men in batik shirts. But you will find women at the board of directors.
In another male-dominated organisation of chief executives, she and her female peers, decided to give their fellow women a hand up. “We felt privileged and we thought it was our duty to trickle economic opportunities down to other women”. A few months later, they founded the first Indonesian “she-to-she” investment fund through ANGIN, providing early-stage financing to 15 women-led or owned businesses.
Noni understood early on that fixing the gender imbalance would require more than investing in women entrepreneurs. Over the last 20 years, she has filtered her entire enterprise through the gender lens, coming up with new solutions where the gaps have stood out to her. In 2002 she created a philanthropic arm, Bluebird Peduli, and discovered that only a few girls benefited from the scholarship program provided to their employees’ children. She urged the team to boost outreach efforts in the families and soon managed to establish gender parity. “We didn’t apply any quotas. We simply asked parents to give equal opportunities to their children”, she explains. Sometimes, you just need to unbox people’s thinking.
However, social biases are not always that easy to break down. Noni is committed to have more women joining the ranks of BlueBird’s drivers. Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it makes great business sense too. A study showed that female passengers – half of their customer-base – felt more secure when taking a ride with a woman behind the wheel. At the same time, the profession should be in theory attractive to women, offering flexible working hours and higher income than clerical jobs they are usually directed at. Male drivers receive incentives if they recommend female candidates. But transforming culturally-established gender roles take time.
Meanwhile, Noni is bringing economic empowerment right to women’s doorsteps. In 2014, she launched Kartini Bluebird, named after Indonesia’s most famous feminist, to provide home-based vocational training to the wives of Bluebird’s employees. The program offers sewing, baking or catering, to help women launch their own business and earn additional income. As of today, Bluebird Kartini has already supported up to 40,000 women.
