Gojek Founder and Ex-CEO Appointed Indonesia's Minister of Education and Culture Makarim had announced his resignation to the press on Monday

By Aparajita Saxena • Oct 23, 2019

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Ridehailing giant Gojek's founder and former Chief Executive Officer, Nadiem Makarim, who resigned from his position with the unicorn on Monday, is set to take over as Indonesia's education and culture minister, the company said in a press release.

Gojek's President, Andre Soelistyo, and cofounder, Kevin Aluwi, will take over Makarim's role as co-CEOs of the company.

"We started this company with nothing, other than a deep desire to change things for the better. We saw that the streets of Jakarta were a mess and that there was an informal community of ojek drivers who could easily act as a huge part of the solution to that mess, if only they were organised and working efficiently," Makarim said in his departure email to Gojek's staff.

"With just that initial desire to improve life for everyone, as well as a large amount of support from countless friends, partners and stakeholders, we've created Gojek," he added.

Makarim will not retain any executive or advisory role in the company, Gojek said. The company so far has raised a total of $3.1 billion in over 12 rounds of funding from investors including Visa, MUFJ, Google, and Tencent Holdings. Their latest fundraising round, series F, was in July 2019.

Soelistyo will take over Gojek's corporate functions, international expansion, and the financial services businesses, among others, while Aluwi will focus on product development, marketing, organisational development, and the compaby's transportation and food delivery businesses, the company said.

Aparajita Saxena

Former Deputy Associate Editor, Asia Pacific

Aparajita is Former Deputy Associate Editor for Entrepreneur Asia Pacific. She joined Entrepreneur after nearly five years with Reuters, where she chased the Asian and U.S. finance markets.

At Entrepreneur Asia Pacific, she wrote about trends in the Asia Pacific startup ecosystem. She also loves to look for problems startups face in their day-to-day and tries to present ways to deal with those issues via her stories, with inputs from other startups that may have once been in that boat.

Outside of work, she likes spending her time reading books (fiction/non-fiction/back of a shampoo bottle), chasing her two dogs around the house, exploring new wines, solo-travelling, laughing at memes, and losing online multiplayer battle royale games.

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