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Nadiem Makarim

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Nadiem Anwar Makarim
Nadiem Anwar Makarim
BornJuly 4, 1984 (age 42)
Singapore
NationalityIndonesian
EducationBrown University (BA); Harvard Business School (MBA)
OccupationBusinessman, technology entrepreneur
CompanyGojek (founder and former chief executive)
TitleMinister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of Indonesia (2021 to 2024); Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia (2019 to 2021)
SpouseFranka Franklin (m. 2014)
Signature of Nadiem Anwar Makarim

Nadiem Anwar Makarim (born 4 July 1984) is an Indonesian businessman and former government minister who founded the ride hailing and payments company Gojek and later served as Indonesia's minister of education. He built Gojek from a small motorcycle taxi call centre in Jakarta into one of Southeast Asia's largest technology companies before leaving to join President Joko Widodo's cabinet in October 2019.

Makarim served as Indonesia's Minister of Education and Culture from October 2019, and, after a 2021 ministry merger, as the first Minister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, until his term ended in 2024. During his tenure he ended a rule allowing schools to mandate religious dress and oversaw a multi trillion rupiah digitalisation programme that supplied Chromebook laptops to schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That programme later became the basis of a corruption case against him. Indonesia's Attorney General's Office named Makarim a suspect in September 2025, alleging he steered the laptop procurement toward Google's products following a meeting with Google Indonesia representatives, in a case prosecutors linked to Google's earlier investment in Gojek. A Jakarta court convicted him of corruption on 30 June 2026 and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, a fine and hundreds of billions of rupiah in restitution. An appeals court reduced the sentence to nine years on 25 September 2026. Makarim has denied wrongdoing throughout and has continued to pursue further appeals.

Early life and education

Nadiem Anwar Makarim was born on 4 July 1984 to Indonesian parents.[1] His father, Nono Anwar Makarim, is an activist and lawyer who co-founded the Jakarta law firm Makarim & Taira S., and is of mixed Minangkabau, Javanese and Arab descent; his mother, Atika Algadri, worked as a freelance writer.[1] His maternal grandfather, Hamid Algadri, was a figure in Indonesia's independence movement who took part in the Linggarjati and Renville negotiations and the Round Table Conference, and served in the country's early post-independence parliament.[1]

Makarim moved between Jakarta and Singapore for his primary and secondary schooling, completing high school in Singapore.[2][1] He earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from Brown University in the United States, graduating in 2006, and later completed a Master of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.[3] He has said his years studying abroad gave him a different lens through which to view Indonesia on his return.[1]

Career

McKinsey & Company (2006 to 2009)

After graduating from Brown University, Makarim returned to Indonesia and joined McKinsey & Company in Jakarta as a management consultant, a role he held for about three years.[3][1]

Zalora Indonesia (2011 to 2012)

After completing his MBA, Makarim became a co-founder and managing director of Zalora Indonesia, the local arm of the online fashion retailer, in 2011.[3] He left the role in 2012 to concentrate on the ride hailing business he had begun building, saying he had learned what he needed from the experience of helping run a large regional start-up.[3]

Kartuku (2013 to 2014)

Makarim subsequently served as chief innovation officer of Kartuku, an Indonesian cashless payment services provider, while continuing to develop his own company on the side.[3] Kartuku was later acquired by Gojek in December 2017, alongside the payment gateway Midtrans and the savings platform Mapan, in a deal intended to strengthen Gojek's GoPay digital wallet.[4]

Founding Gojek (2010 to 2015)

Makarim founded Gojek in 2010, initially operating under the name Go-Biz from a small office measuring five by seven metres.[1] The business began as a manual telephone call centre: customers rang in and a dispatcher tried to find the nearest available motorcycle taxi, or ojek, driver, with a successful match sometimes taking 15 minutes or more.[1] Makarim has said the idea grew out of his own frustration as a regular ojek user in Jakarta, where fares were not transparent and drivers were hard to find during rush hour, combined with personal experience of ojek drivers who ran errands for him and convinced him the informal sector could be run professionally.[1]

For roughly the first three to four years, Gojek attracted no outside investment. Makarim funded the company using his own savings and money borrowed from friends and family, and held other jobs, including at Zalora and Kartuku, to support himself and subsidise the business.[1] The company introduced a smartphone application in 2014, adding services including food delivery.[3] According to the Straits Times, Makarim launched the Gojek ride hailing app more broadly in January 2015 with a pool of about 700 riders, funded with roughly US$100,000 of his own savings and borrowed money.[5] By June 2015 the company employed around 300 staff and had more than 10,000 registered drivers operating in Jakarta and its surrounding areas, as well as Bandung, Surabaya and Bali, up from about 600 drivers at the start of 2014.[3] The app offered services including GoRide, GoSend and GoMart, and the range of services on the platform later expanded to 22 in total.[1]

Growth and international expansion (2015 to 2019)

Gojek expanded rapidly under Makarim. By December 2016, when Makarim received the Straits Times' Asian of the Year award, the company supported more than 250,000 two and four wheel drivers, about 3,000 other service providers and 35,000 GoFood merchants.[6] By December 2017, when Gojek announced the acquisition of Kartuku, Midtrans and Mapan, the company had 15 million weekly active users, 900,000 driver partners and more than 125,000 merchants, and was processing more than 100 million transactions a month; Makarim said the acquisitions were "a strategic step in strengthening our foundation" in Indonesia's fintech industry.[4]

In January 2018, Gojek secured a US$1.5 billion investment to compete with the Singapore based rival Grab, a round that valued the company at about US$5 billion, and began its first expansion outside Indonesia, into the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.[7] Discussing the competition with Grab, Makarim told Bloomberg, "Our collective imagination cannot be copied or outspent."[7] Gojek began operations in Vietnam in September 2018 and started trials in Singapore and Thailand at the end of that year.[8]

In early 2019, sources told Reuters that Gojek had raised more than US$1 billion in a funding round led by Tencent Holdings, JD.com and Alphabet's Google, valuing the company at up to US$10 billion.[8] On 6 April 2019, Bloomberg reported that the market intelligence firm CB Insights had listed Gojek among 19 "decacorn" start-ups worldwide valued at US$10 billion or more, making it Indonesia's first company to reach that valuation and Southeast Asia's second after Grab.[9] By late February 2019, Gojek had launched in Thailand under the brand name GET and was building a presence in the Philippines through its acquisition of the fintech company Coins.ph, after an earlier application to launch mobility services there was rejected for not meeting local ownership rules.[8] Makarim said at the time that Gojek's Philippine entry would come quickly once the ownership issue was resolved, and declined to say whether the company would enter Malaysia, Cambodia or Myanmar, though co-founder Kevin Aluwi had said Gojek was evaluating other regional markets.[8]

Departure from Gojek (2019)

On 20 October 2019, one day after President Joko Widodo was sworn in for a second term, Gojek announced that Makarim would step down as chief executive to join the new cabinet.[10] He was replaced by group president Andre Soelistyo and co-founder Kevin Aluwi as co-chief executives.[10] At the time of his departure, Gojek had more than two million driver partners and 400,000 merchants across Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, and had processed about US$9 billion in gross transactions the previous year.[10] A mid-2018 report by Globe Asia estimated Makarim's personal wealth at around US$100 million, ranking him 150th on a list of Indonesia's wealthiest people.[1]

Leadership and management style

Makarim has described Gojek in its early years as a software company whose true customers were the ojek drivers themselves, and he built the business around formalising and professionalising an informal transport sector that had previously been looked down upon.[3][1] He has said Gojek's drivers became more productive under the platform because the app allowed them to combine passenger trips with deliveries and shopping errands, increasing their income from a single vehicle.[1] As a manager, he ran the company for several years without outside capital, personally covering losses by working other jobs and borrowing from friends and family rather than folding the business.[1] As education minister, Makarim framed the Chromebook procurement programme in terms of cost and safety, arguing that Chromebooks were 10 to 30 per cent cheaper than rival devices, carried no extra licensing cost, and included built in parental controls that blocked pornography and gambling content without additional fees.[11]

Major deals and strategic decisions

Makarim's most significant corporate decisions centred on consolidating Gojek's payments business and expanding regionally. In December 2017, Gojek acquired three Indonesian financial technology companies, Kartuku, Midtrans and Mapan, in a deal Gojek said was designed to build an inclusive financial ecosystem for banks, small merchants, driver partners and consumers; the acquired businesses together processed more than 67.5 trillion rupiah a year in transactions.[4] The leaders of the acquired companies were given senior roles across the enlarged Gojek Group, including as head of GoPay and as the group's chief financial officer.[4] In 2018 and 2019, Gojek raised more than US$2.5 billion across successive funding rounds from investors including Google, Tencent, JD.com, Temasek, Sequoia, KKR, Warburg Pincus and Visa, and used the capital to expand into the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in direct competition with Grab.[7][8][1]

As education minister, Makarim's most consequential decision was to direct the ministry's school digitalisation programme toward Google's ChromeOS platform. Prosecutors later said that in February 2020 Makarim met with representatives of Google Indonesia to discuss the use of Google products, including Chromebooks and Chrome Device Management, in the ministry's procurement, and that he subsequently issued technical specifications for the programme that only Chromebooks could meet.[12]

Financial and market performance

Under Makarim, Gojek's driver network grew from about 700 riders at the January 2015 launch of its app to more than 250,000 by the end of 2016, roughly 900,000 by the end of 2017, and more than two million partners by the time he left the company in October 2019.[5][6][4][10] The company's valuation rose from about US$5 billion in January 2018 to up to US$10 billion by early 2019, when it joined a group of 19 "decacorn" start-ups tracked globally by CB Insights, becoming Indonesia's first company to reach that threshold.[7][8][9] Gross transactions processed on the platform reached about US$9 billion in the year before Makarim's departure.[10]

The education ministry's Chromebook procurement programme that Makarim oversaw was valued at about 9.3 trillion rupiah (roughly US$563 million), according to the Attorney General's Office's director of investigations.[13] Investigators alleged the state lost about 1.9 to 1.98 trillion rupiah (roughly US$115 to 125 million) through the programme, and that lower specification Chromebooks costing about 3 million rupiah each were procured for around 6 million rupiah per unit.[13][14][12] Following his conviction, a Jakarta court initially ordered Makarim to pay a fine of 1 billion rupiah and restitution of 809.6 billion rupiah; on appeal in September 2026 the restitution figure was reduced to about 548 billion rupiah, roughly US$30.6 million.[12][15]

Board memberships and outside roles

Reliable, independently verifiable information on Makarim's board memberships and outside roles beyond Gojek and his cabinet post could not be confirmed for this article.

Controversies

Chromebook procurement corruption case

In May 2025, Indonesia's Attorney General's Office opened an investigation into alleged corruption in the education ministry's procurement of Chromebook laptops for the "digitalisation of schools" programme, which ran during Makarim's time as minister and was valued at around 9.3 to 9.9 trillion rupiah.[11][13] Investigators said the programme, intended to supply devices for remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, had been steered toward Google's ChromeOS products despite a 2019 assessment by the previous education minister that found Chromebooks ineffective in many parts of Indonesia that lacked reliable internet access.[12]

Makarim was questioned as a witness on 23 June 2025 and 15 July 2025, and a six-month travel ban was imposed on him from 19 June 2025.[14][16] On 4 September 2025, after a third round of questioning, the Attorney General's Office named Makarim a suspect, identified publicly by the initials "NAM"; he was arrested the same day.[14][17] Television footage showed him being led from the prosecutor's office in handcuffs wearing a red detainee vest; he told reporters, "I didn't do anything, the truth will come out. God will reveal the truth! For me, throughout my life, integrity is number one, honesty is number one. May God protect me."[13] Four other suspects were named in the case: Sri Wahyuningsih, a former director of elementary education; Mulyatsyah, a former director of junior high schools; Jurist Tan, who had served as Makarim's special staff; and Ibrahim Arief, a technology infrastructure consultant. Tan was later placed on an Interpol red notice list and had his passport revoked on 4 August 2025.[14][17]

Prosecutors alleged that in February 2020 Makarim met with representatives of Google Indonesia to discuss the use of ChromeOS and Chrome Device Management in the ministry's procurement, and that he then issued technical specifications matching only Chromebook devices, and that Google's earlier investment in Gojek's parent company created what prosecutor Roy Riady called "an unhealthy symbiosis in the procurement of state goods".[12] Google denied the allegations, saying the bulk of its investment in Gojek related entities occurred before Makarim's appointment as minister and that it had "not offered, promised or provided benefits to Ministry of Education officials in exchange for their decision to adopt Google products".[12] Google was not charged in the case.[12]

Makarim maintained that the procurement followed transparency principles and was targeted at schools with existing internet access, which he said differed from the previous administration's focus on remote and disadvantaged regions, and he has pointed to figures showing 97 per cent of more than one million laptops procured during his tenure had been delivered to 77,000 schools by 2023.[11][13] On 23 September 2025, his legal team, led by attorney Hana Pertiwi and assisted by Hotman Paris Hutapea, filed a pretrial motion challenging his suspect status, arguing prosecutors lacked the two pieces of preliminary evidence required under Indonesian law, including an audit of state losses from the Supreme Audit Agency or the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency; Makarim was charged under Articles 2(1) and 3, in conjunction with Article 18, of Indonesia's 1999 anti-corruption law as amended in 2001.[18]

On 30 June 2026, the Central Jakarta Corruption Court convicted Makarim of abuse of authority causing losses to the state, while acquitting him of directly enriching himself. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, fined 1 billion rupiah, and ordered to pay 809.6 billion rupiah in restitution, with an additional five-year prison term to apply if the restitution went unpaid.[12] The sentence was lighter than the 18 years and roughly 5.6 trillion rupiah in restitution that prosecutors had sought.[12] Makarim told reporters after the verdict, "The judges couldn't even look me in the eye," and said he could not pay the amount ordered, adding "there is no element of state loss, no element of violation of the law". He denied wrongdoing throughout the case and said he would appeal, describing the prosecution as an investigative error. On 25 September 2026, the Jakarta High Court reduced his sentence on appeal to nine years and cut the restitution order to about 548 billion rupiah, with judges describing the original sentence as inaccurate and unfair; Makarim's team indicated it would pursue a further appeal.[15] The BBC described the case as relating to a laptop deal made during Makarim's term as education minister, and it became one of the highest profile corruption prosecutions involving a former Indonesian government minister.[19][12]

School religious dress policy

In February 2021, Makarim's ministry, together with the religious affairs and interior ministries, issued a decree banning public schools from requiring students, teachers and staff of any religion to wear religious attire, including the Islamic headscarf; schools were given 30 days to repeal any such compulsory rules or face sanctions.[19] The decree followed national controversy after a Christian student at a vocational school in Padang was repeatedly told to wear a headscarf. Makarim defended the policy, saying that whether to wear religious clothing was "an individual's right... it is not the school's decision".[19]

Personal life

Makarim married Franka Franklin in 2014. Franklin is a granddaughter of the veteran Indonesian film actress Indriati Iskak, known for her role in the film Tiga Dara.[1]

Philanthropy

After receiving the Nikkei Asia Prize in May 2019, Makarim pledged the US$30,000 prize money toward education costs for the children of Gojek's driver partners; Gojek matched the sum, doubling the total donation to about 860 million rupiah (roughly US$60,000).[20]

Recognition

  • 2016: Asian of the Year, awarded by The Straits Times; Makarim was the first Indonesian to receive the honour since it was established in 2012.[6]
  • 2018: Named to the Bloomberg 50, Bloomberg Businessweek's annual list of people who defined global business that year.[7]
  • 2019: Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic and Business Innovation, presented in Tokyo; Makarim was, at the time, the youngest recipient from Asia.[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 <ref>"Riwayat Nadiem Makarim dan Perjuangan Membesarkan Gojek".23 July 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  2. ↑ <ref>"Nadiem Makarim".Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 <ref>"Innovating ideas revolutionize ojek".20 June 2015.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 <ref>"Perkuat Gopay, Gojek Caplok Kartuku, Midtrans dan Mapan".15 December 2017.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 <ref>"Face to watch in 2019: Nadiem Makarim, CEO of Gojek".23 December 2018.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 <ref>"Go-Jek founder Nadiem Makarim receives Asian of the Year award".7 December 2016.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 <ref>"The Bloomberg 50: The People Who Defined Global Business in 2018".2018.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 <ref>"Go-Jek begins services in Thailand, says Philippine launch to be 'pretty fast': CEO".27 February 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 <ref>"Go-Jek Joins 'Decacorn' Ranks With $10 Billion Valuation".6 April 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 <ref>"Gojek founder and CEO Nadiem Makarim resigns to join Indonesian cabinet, Soelistyo and Aluwi to be new co-CEOs".20 October 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 <ref>"Nadiem Jelaskan Alasan Pengadaan Laptop Chromebook di Kemdikbud".10 June 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  12. ↑ 12.00 12.01 12.02 12.03 12.04 12.05 12.06 12.07 12.08 12.09 <ref>"GoJek co-founder Nadiem Makarim jailed 10 years over Indonesia Chromebook scandal".30 June 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 <ref>"Founder of Indonesian payments platform Gojek arrested in connection with graft probe".4 September 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 <ref>"Kejagung Tetapkan Nadiem Makarim Tersangka Korupsi Pengadaan Laptop".4 September 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 <ref>"Court cuts Nadiem's sentence but he seeks another appeal".25 September 2026.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  16. ↑ <ref>"Nadiem Makarim Datangi Kejagung, Balik Dipanggil Kasus Dugaan Korupsi Pengadaan Laptop Chromebook".4 September 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 <ref>"Nadiem Makarim Jadi Tersangka Kasus Korupsi Laptop Chromebook di Kejagung".4 September 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  18. ↑ <ref>"Nadiem Makarim Ajukan Praperadilan atas Status Tersangka Kasus Korupsi Laptop".23 September 2025.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 <ref>"Indonesia bans forced religious attire in schools".Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 <ref>"Termuda se-Asia, Nadiem Raih Penghargaan Inovasi Ekonomi dan Bisnis".29 May 2019.Retrieved 28 September 2026.</ref>
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