(Bloomberg) — Nadiem Makarim, co-founder of Indonesia’s first startup unicorn Gojek, has resigned as chief executive officer of the ride-hailing giant to take on a cabinet post in the country’s new government.
His appointment is in line with President Joko Widodo’s publicly stated preference to include professionals and millennials in his second-term team. Widodo, commonly known as Jokowi, was sworn in on Sunday and is wasting little time in unveiling his cabinet roster.
The Gojek founder, who announced his resignation to reporters Monday, hails from a prominent Indonesian family. His grandfather was part of the delegation that won the country’s independence from the Netherlands in a 1949 conference at The Hague.
Read more: Jokowi Eyes $7 Trillion Indonesia Economy With New Cabinet
Makarim started Gojek in 2010 as a call-center arranging couriers in Jakarta. At that early stage, everything was done manually — employees called motorbike drivers one by one until someone accepted an order — and Makarim had to work at other startups in order to sustain Gojek.
It was only in 2014 that the Gojek co-founder decided to introduce a mobile app, with backing from private equity investor Northstar Group. When that debuted in January 2015, the service was so popular Gojek couldn’t cope with demand, he said in an interview in 2016.
Valued at $10 billion, Gojek today has more than 2 million drivers and 400,000 merchants, while its apps have been downloaded more than 155 million times in Southeast Asia. The company counts Google, JD.com Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. among its investors and is seen as an icon for aspiring Indonesian entrepreneurs.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at [email protected];Vlad Savov in Tokyo at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at [email protected], Thomas Kutty Abraham
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