Over our team’s g-Lab engagement, we met several Indonesian entrepreneurs. Each one different, there was also a common entrepreneurial bent they shared. They were accomplished and ambitious, driven yet cautious; they were forerunners who readily shared their lessons-learned. They also measured their businesses, and thus themselves, against global standards even as they currently focused keenly on business opportunities in Indonesian markets.
Our host company, Pro Energi, founded and led by Robert Wardhana, charged us to work on a growth strategy and ideas he had for his rapidly growing company. Although Pro Energi was growing quickly with revenues doubling from 2010 to 2011, Robert was aiming much higher. He challenged us to explore financing and acquisition strategies that would meet guidelines he set forth and forge these into an actionable 5-year roadmap. We were excited by this challenge and dove right in. Robert was available and responses and helped us by arranging for informative tours of the company’s operations in Borneo (aka Kalimantan) during our first week on the ground. It was fortunate to be paired with such an engaging entrepreneur.
Our team brought the skills and attitude to meet Robert’s goals. Our team included Racheal Chimbghanda, a dual MIT Sloan MBA & Harvard Kennedy student with a strong marketing & strategy sensibility. Another teammate, Anshul Bhagi, was a passionate contributor and a politician in the making complete with future romantic scandals to come, though he does not know it yet. Peers at MIT elected Anshul class leader, where he is a Course 6 (Comp Sci and Electrical Engineering) student. Carlos Yeung was our team’s client liaison and he brought strong finance skills both from his MIT Sloan studies and summer work experience in Finance in Hong Kong. Carlos was very results-oriented and attentive to detail, earning and maintaining our client’s confidence from the start. My summer experience in private equity and prior management experience in a startup also contributed to our engagement.
Robert also arranged meeting with other industry leaders and entrepreneurs who were clients and business partners, to give us perspective on the markets and business in Indonesia. We met with a coal mine operator, an oil services principal, and a private equity partner among others. The sampling of people we met from the Indonesian business class were all very focused on the local opportunities for business in Indonesia, yet were focused on being globally competitive. This local focus measured on global standards really stood out for me. Doing business as had been previously done was not enough for them. They all only had the highest ambitions and expectations for the Indonesian markets in which they competed. Their goals included growth strategies fully informed by regional and global dynamics, as well as global best practices in financial and operational management. They also brought a business sensibility informed by evolving Indonesian business culture.
One such sensibility was how personal rapport and relationships facilitated business, without superseding it. You did not get the sense that any of these entrepreneurs would entertain a sub-par product, service, or agreement as a favor to a friend. If anything, their friendships were in part built on having delivered exceedingly well for one another. In fact, one colleague of Robert’s explained how effectively Robert’s company, Pro Energi, had delivered results and established a good business reputation and earning Robert the evident respect he had for him.
It was an eye-opening experience to learn of the paths these Indonesian entrepreneurs had blazed. Mostly, they were western educated with degrees from Boston University, Cornell, and others. When they made their decisions to start businesses in Indonesia, they mostly went against the grain. Rather than stick to the family business, or remain in comfortable and secure jobs and careers abroad, they chose to and start difficult businesses in tough markets. Indonesia still has a poor ranking on the world corruption indices, if that is one indication of how challenging being an entrepreneur in Indonesia can be.
Robert branched out from the family business early and tried at least two ventures before achieving success in Pro Energi. And he continues to seek out more opportunities and alignment in his business ventures. And reflective of Robert’s maverick approach to business is the fact that though he is very knowledgeable about certain industries, he has now twice entered into markets that he had no prior experience in and successfully so. Robert told us of the methodical approach he once decided to take to improve his golf game, and is now a 5 handicap. Like mastering a new game, he seems to have taken the same approach to mastering new industries to run his businesses in.
The other entrepreneurs we met had left high-paying jobs in order to start businesses from scratch. Patrick was an Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs in NY before co-founding what is now the largest local PE firm in Indonesia with US$ 1.7B in three funds. And Patrick is palpably proud of the social impact that their investments have, especially the bank catering to Indonesia’s lower economic class – BTPN (Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional). Similarly, Rizal, another entrepreneur and colleague’s of Robert left his position as country head for Shell Indonesia and started a new company a year ago to provide services to oil and gas companies. In his first year, he is competing successfully against incumbents, and is evidently engaged and having full autonomy in his own company.
Though this is only a small sub-set of the Indonesian entrepreneurial class, these individuals are stand out in their global aspirations for their businesses in Indonesia. They measure their successes against a global benchmark. To the extent that there are more such visionaries in the country, it is very promising for Indonesia. It is the fourth most populous country in the world and one rich with resources, the most important of which is its young, optimistic, and engaging people. It is no coincidence that Robert, Rizal, Patrick are all in their mid-thirties and are already so accomplished.
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