ASEAN, the IMF and the WB Regional Meet: NUSA DUA- Gov’t Welcomes Alibaba Chief’s Plan to Open Entrepreneurship Institute in Indonesia

The country’s skills shortage is so severe that its largest unicorn startup, Go-Jek Indonesia, had to recruit engineers from India to support its sprawling operations.

Ma, who has served on the government’s digital economy advisory board since last year, did not indicate when the school would be established, but said he aims to train 1,000 tech leaders annually over the next decade.

“We’re giving a lot of opportunities for young Indonesian people to learn,” Ma told reporters after the meeting.

He added that it was important for Indonesia to invest in human capital because “only when people improve; when people’s minds change; when people’s skills improve, then we can enter the digital period.”

Indonesia is a key market for Alibaba, whose cloud-computing arm Alibaba Cloud launched a data center in the country in March.

Ma said his company would continue to invest “not only in e-commerce, but also cloud computing, logistics and … infrastructure” in Indonesia, while also helping local businesses to grow.

McKinsey estimated in a report released on Aug. 30, that the value of Indonesia’s e-commerce market may surge to at least $55 billion by 2022 from $8 billion in 2017./ By : Sarah Yuniarni

Additional reporting by Reuters

FILE PHOTO: A driver and passenger ride on a motorbike, part of the Go-Jek ride-hailing service, on a busy street in central Jakarta, Indonesia December 18, 2015. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/FIle Photo

Go-Jek Aims to Raise $2b for Southeast Asia Expansion: Sources

The Ministry of Transportation plans to develop a ride-hailing application rivaling those by ride-hailing services Go-Jek and Grab, to cater to more people and set an example for other companies. (Reuters Photo/Darren Whiteside)