Former Go-Jek Executive Joins All-Female Startup Founders Movement
Jakarta. Kibar Kreasi Indonesia, an IT-consultancy turned startup incubator company, is set to kick off an informal education program aimed at creating female leaders in the technology industry called FemaleDev next year.
"FemaleDev has quickly transformed from a community into a program," FemaleDev chief Alamanda Shantika Santoso said last week.
Alamanda made a name for herself as the vice president of app-based ride-sharing platform Go-Jek. She led a team to design the Go-Jek application.
Ala, as she is often called, left Go-Jek in October this year to join Kibar.
"I was very enthusiastic to join Kibar," she told reporters at the FemaleDev Breakthrough Summit in Bali last week.
Kibar is the company behind the 1,000 Digital Startups program aimed at creating thousands of digital startups by 2020 that had gained the support of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics.
According to Ala, FemaleDev will be dedicated to women and enriched with interpersonal skill coaching — for public speaking and teamwork — and leadership training in project management, problem solving and negotiation.
"There is this stereotype that women can't perform in the technology industry," Ala said.
"I don't want to dwell [in that stereotype], I want us to stand out in the technology industry," she said.
Ala, now 28, will lead the FemaleDev program in Jakarta, Denpasar, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya starting January next year.
FemaleDev had already started a study group since Oct. 24 — to end on Dec. 4 — in which Ala and her small team of eight collaborate with female developers to exchange knowledge and skills to develop Android apps.
The program will continue with a series of talks in January and February next year in which tech-industry experts share their experience with the team.
A workshop will also begin in January and last until April. During the workshop, female developers can join a soft skill camp and a hack sprint. A bootcamp will be held in April until May while an incubation stage will begin in April and last until August next year.
The FemaleDev community has been around since 2013 as a platform for female developers to learn, share and showcase their skills. It has so far held 60 workshops for more than 3,000 young female developers in 10 cities in Indonesia.
Leaving Go-Jek to create "more Go-Jeks"
Asked why she decided to leave the much-lauded startup Go-Jek, Ala said she was keen to help others create even more job opportunities for Indonesians.
"I want to help Indonesians reach their dreams. That's why I joined FemaleDev and the 1,000 Digital Startups program," she said.
According to Ala, anyone can build a startup like Go-Jek as long as they can come up with an idea that can be monetized.
"How do you think Go-Jek managed to become such a disruptive innovation? Adults tend to get bogged down in routines, never think about how the world can be a better, more enjoyable place. We need to think more like kids, try to make the world more fun for us," she said.
"Big innovations start from trying to find solutions for simple problems," Ala said.
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