By Agatha Christy Chandra & Sharon Koharjo
Investor and Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee coined the term ‘unicorn’ – a collection of startup companies with valuations over USD$1 billion or more. As written in her article, “Welcome to The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups,” inexperienced founders are rare, but those who are well-educated are proven to be more successful in building tech companies.
Furthermore, Lee outlines that the majority unicorn co-founders attended selective universities, with more than two-thirds of her unicorns having at least one founder who graduated from one of the “Top 10 school” worldwide (e.g. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge). Since the inception of the term ‘unicorn,’ there are over 390 unicorn companies registered - the US dominates the roster with a record number of 194 unicorns. But recently, market factors have started to shift towards Southeast Asia, where consumers highly favor online offerings. This renders the market in Southeast Asia an extensive target for the e-commerce industry, where it finds an attractive market size and growing demand for online purchases from the exponential growth of smartphone usage.
In this article, we will introduce the educational background of some of the most successful founders of the emerging Southeast Asian Unicorns:
Anthony Tan (Malaysia)
The CEO and co-founder of a ride-hailing startup based in Singapore, Grab, graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. degree in Public Policy. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Tan went on to receive his master’s degree from Harvard Business School, with an extensive experience as the Head of Marketing for his long-term established family business in Malaysia, Tang Chong Motor. His inspiration to create the super app began after Tan and his co-founder, Tan Hooi Ling, won a business competition based on the idea of improving safety among Southeast Asian passengers on commercial rides. As for today, Grab has surpassed the threshold of a unicorn by elevenfold and is now acknowledged as a decacorn, with a current value at $11 billion.
Tan Hooi Ling (Malaysia)
Tan Hooi Ling, the other half in the GRAB company, has been appointed as a new member of the NUS Board of Trustees by the Minister for Education in Singapore. The co-founder and COO of Grab earned her Bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the University of Bath, United Kingdom. Although she had initially graduated with an engineering degree, her passion took a different route to a profession as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in Malaysia. However, like Anthony Tan, her career path paved way for her to earn a master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, she met her business partner, Anthony Tan - today, they are responsible for the expansion of Grab across Southeast Asia, which recently acquired Uber’s Southeast Asia assets to go against its major competitor, Go-Jek.
Nadiem Makarim (Indonesia)
_1578898132.jpg)
The Singaporean-born Indonesian is most well-known as the CEO and co-founder of Go-Jek, a ride-hailing app that has expanded to multiple on-demand services in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, and Thailand. He received an undergraduate degree in international relations from Brown University, followed by a one-year exchange program in the London School of Economics. After that, he went on to earn his Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard University.
Before his successful innovation, Makarim started as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company in Jakarta, and then went on to pursue a managing editor position in Zalora Indonesia, where he reportedly crossed paths with his Go-Jek co-founder, Kevin Aluwi. Starting small in 2011, Go-Jek is now one out of three ride-hailing apps in Asia that has reached a decacorn status, with a market value of $10 billion, coming third after Didi Chuxing (China) at $56 billion and Grab (Singapore) at $11 billion for ride-hailing apps.
Kevin Aluwi (Indonesia)
Along with Nadiem, Kevin was involved with the idea of Go-Jek when he was still the head business of intelligence at Zalora. He earned his B.S. in corporate finance from Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, and is now the chief information officer of the company. Before his career as a CIO, Aluwi co-started an online dating site SETIPE in 2014, which later acquired in 2016 by Lunch Actually, a Singaporean-based dating company. Aluwi has spoken at many tech conferences and has been featured several times on Nadiem Makarim’s new podcast show based on their company GO FIGURE. For more information, you can find a feature of his profile on 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30.
William Tanuwijaya (Indonesia)
As the Founder and CEO of Tokopedia – an internet-based platform to ease transactions between merchants and buyers - William attended Bina Nusantara University (BINUS) and graduated in 2003 with a degree in information technology. Early in the 2000’s, college life was more difficult without the existence of Wi-Fi, but William was fortunate enough to work at Internet Café Operator. The unlimited access to the web gave him the epiphany to start an internet-based business, Tokopedia, which was eventually launched in 2009 and declared a unicorn at the end of 2017. Today, Tokopedia has a current value of $7 billion.
Ferry Unardi (Indonesia)
Launched in 2012, Traveloka is now recorded as one of Southeast Asia’s top travel startup. Ferry Unardi, the CEO of Traveloka, graduated from Purdue University in 2008 with math and computer science degrees. Afterward, Ferry worked for three years at Microsoft in Seattle before enrolling at Harvard Business School. However, his auspicious intuition to build a tech company led to his early departure from Harvard University to start Indonesia’s leading travel startup, which has evolved to become a leader in the lifestyle of travel.
Derianto Kusuma (Indonesia)
The co-founder and former CTO of Traveloka, Derianto Kusuma completed his degree at Stanford University, majoring in computer science. Derianto’s impressive achievement during his high school life included winning the silver medal for the International Olympiad in Informatics competition three years in a row (2004, 2005, 2006). Similar to Ferry, Derianto had previously worked for Microsoft and LinkedIn before the establishment of Traveloka. The tech company received the unicorn tag in July 2017, and currently has a valuation of $2 billion.
Achmad Zaky (Indonesia)
The CEO and co-founder of Bukalapak, Achmad Zacky graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology with a computer science major in 2004. Zacky started his career as a Business Systems Consultant, and is well known for his quick count software invention on national television during the election season. In January 2018, Bukalapak is officially declared a unicorn with a current valuation of $1 Billion.
