Representatives of Gojek and start-up accelerator Digitaraya pose for a picture during the launch of Gojek Xcelerate. HARI DARMAWAN/TRIBUNNEWS
Finding the right talents remains a major challenge for Indonesia’s rapidly growing technology start-ups as the number of existing skilled employees is insufficient to enable them to implement the latest digital technology.
The Jakarta Post last week had a chance to talk to representatives of start-ups participating in the Gojek Xcelerate start-up acceleration programme and got some insight into their journey in implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for their businesses.
For complaint handling app Qlue, finding the right talents that understand AI/ML is quite hard.
“Most [qualified talents] have been hired by unicorns,” said Qlue technology and innovation vice-president Pradita Utama.
Utama said he had to talent scout his team from communities and peers. He said he could not rely on platforms like LinkedIn as most prospective candidates did not have a presence on such platforms.
“We also partner with headhunting firms for talent procurement [in the engineering department],” he said.
Mobile concierge app Izy.ai also faces a similar challenge. “That’s right. Talents like data engineer or data scientist are hard to find,” said Izy.ai co-founder Gerry Mangentang.
He said his company was currently utilising existing talents by scaling up their skills. “We plan to hire new talents, but we have yet to find suitable ones [for us].”
For start-ups like Qlue and Izy.ai, the use of AI/ML is significant in accelerating their business, by which it could help in their operations or improve services for clients and users.
Qlue, which implemented AI/ML last year, reported that its clients had made their businesses 30 per cent more efficient and productive.
“Cost-wise, it’s obvious because, with AI, they don’t have to hire more human resources. Productivity-wise, the companies can monitor their employees’ performance from IoT, CCTV and so on. Previously, they had to depend on public complaints,” said Utama, adding that Qlue’s services were commonly used by mining companies, residential areas, shopping malls and so on.
Meanwhile, Izy.ai is planning to implement AI/ML to ease the operations of its hotel clients by reducing the bottlenecks common in hotel management.
“Our clients will have a database of their guests so that they can customise for each guest [using machine learning],” said Mangentang.
Established last year, the start-up plans to implement its AI/ML technology by the end of this year. The start-up is currently seeking the best practice to implement both.
Mangentang said that by deploying AI/ML, Izy.ai aimed to triple transactions by guests and help clients save 20 to 30 per cent of costs by the end of this year.
Even though finding talents is not easy for some start-ups, PETO, a start-up dedicated to pets and pet owners, has a slightly different view of talent procurement.
“It can be hard, but it can be easy too. There are many talents in Indonesia,” said PETO co-founder Ditya Nandiwardhana, adding that it depended on the method used to find talents that met a company’s needs.
As a new start-up, PETO will utilise its internal resources to implement AI/ML in its business next year. In the meantime, it will seek new talents through social platforms, Nandiwardhana said.
Currently, PETO is developing its architecture for AI/ML deployment, comprising a database management system for machine learning and app-interface.
The AI/ML will be used for user interface and user experience improvement, push notifications and promotions as well as chatbot or user assistant development.
The start-ups acknowledged that participating in an acceleration programme could help them find the best insight for business improvement. Therefore, they joined the first batch of Gojek Xcelerate in the hope of learning more about AI/ML implementation.
Gojek VP of data science Syafri Bahar told the Post that the first batch of Gojek Xcelerate focused on machine learning, with an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm with more than 750 applicants.
Besides start-up companies, many established companies acknowledge that the limited availability of talent and skills hampers their digital transformation programmes.
A survey called Disruptive Decision Making conducted by a managed solution service provider, PT Teltranet Aplikasi Solusi, found that 36 per cent of business leaders in Indonesia considered talent and skill shortages to have hampered their efforts to digitalise their businesses.
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