Page 9 - KLIPINGBELMAWA12062019SORE

Judul
Even unicorns in Indonesia face talent shortfalls
Media
Thejakartapost.com
Terbit
12 Juni 2019
Tone
Positif
Hal/link
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/06/12/even- unicorns-indonesia-face-talent-shortfalls.html
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Jurnalis
Norman Harsono
When Bima Tjahja was appointed associate vice president of data at the Bukalapak e- marketplace in January, he was surprised to discover how difficult it was to find digital talents in Indonesia.
The young man had worked a similar job for four years at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, Australia, where he could get such talents “quite easily”, before moving to Indonesia earlier this year.
“[Indonesia is] actually in a shortage,” he said during a recent discussion in Jakarta about artificial intelligence (AI) and employment. “It’s very hard to find people who, for instance, have a history in applying machine learning or in handling big data.”
He pointed out that a shortage was particularly concerning as Indonesia’s tech industry was “in need of the most digital talent in its history”.
Demand for such talent, which includes software engineers, analysts and data scientists, is expected to rise as Indonesia’s digital economy is predicted to triple in transaction volume from US$27 billion in 2018 to $100 billion by 2025, according to a Google-Temasek report.
Yet, Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said the country had a shortfall of 9 million digital talents to meet a targeted 7 percent economic growth by 2030.
Bima said Bukalapak currently employed about 1,100 people, which the company could make do with even though it would benefit from having more.
Bukalapak, Tokopedia, Grab and Go-Jek, as Southeast Asian unicorns operating in Indonesia, announced over the past five months various investments in local universities to capture more local talent.
Bukalapak opened its AI research center at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) campus in West Java in February. The company provides funding and raw data while the university provides students who are ultimately expected to work for the e-marketplace.
Bukalapak did not disclose the value of its investment in the training center, but the company secured $50 million in a Series D funding round led by Seoul-based Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund in January.