On Wednesday August 15, Antler hosted a happy hour session with Crystal Widjaja, Senior VP for Business Intelligence at Go-Jek. Widjaja joined Go-Jek in 2015 after a trip to Indonesia for the first time—she grew up in the United States. Widjaja is a Co-founder of Generation Girl, a coding camp for young girls that will be launching soon—their mission is to empower more girls to pursue technology. The event was hosted with Freeware Suites in Equity Tower.
Widjaja shared about her experiences since joining Go-Jek in 2015 when the app was first launched. She talked about the challenges they faced early on as 150,000 drivers showed up to registration when Go-Jek was only prepared for 50,000, and how they navigated the difficulties of expanding the operation to adapt to the huge demand. She also shared some valuable insights about moving forward and iterating as you go versus always being overprepared for everything—had Go-Jek waited to build the platform perfectly, they would have never had those 150,000 drivers who were waiting. They eventually did build out the correct infrastructure to catch up with all their rapid progress and growth, and are now expanding in their efforts with newer initiatives such as Go-Life.
Widjaja also touched on how Go-Jek has made an impact. For example, it has helped unbanked individuals in Indonesia send money back home to their families through Go-Pay. Another example Widjaja gave was how Go-Jek looked at data during the Ramadhan prayer periods from the previous year to ensure there would be enough drivers in concentrated areas near mosques when needed.
Jussi Salovaara and Magnus Grimeland presented about Antler, sharing about Antler’s very early-stage program that brings in a cohort of founders, and then makes investments into some of them after two months. The founders then work on the product up to a Demo Day, which will be in January. The first cohort started through the program this past July.
Angga Adhitya Syailendra from Freeware Spaces conducted a small presentation near the beginning, talking about their latest expansion plans in co-working, co-living, other new ventures.
ANGIN has previously spoken with Crystal Widjaja and her co-founder Mila Alfitri for our Women Spotlight.
