MONICA OUDANG

Voice of the silent

Monica oudang talks to ajeng g. anindita about setting up a foundation during the pandemic and how it has helped daily income workers survive

“Eighty percent of Indonesia’s economic backbone is supported by the informal sector and many of them survive on a daily wage.”, states Monica Oudang, Chairwoman of Yayasan Anak Bangsa Bisa (YABB). YABB was founded recently by Gojek to address the economic woes of the informal sector during the past few months.The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to the people in the informal sectors specifically and has affected many lives negatively. While many of us are privileged to be able to go through the pandemic without any significant impact, the informal sector has seen its income grind to a literal halt due to safety policies taken by the government to help combat the spread of the disease. “We realized that the plans for the foundation that we had been discussing late last year had to be fast-tracked due to the pandemic. Gojek was built around the mission to enable the underserved of society; whereby our business thrives when they thrive. They were and are always there for us and now more than ever, we need to be there for them. That’s why we have decided to start Yayasan Anak Bangsa Bisa.” Monica recounted.

Monica Oudang took the reins at Yayasan Anak Bangsa Bisa earlier this year in March. She first joined Gojek as Chief Human Resources Officer back in 2015. She recalled her journey from an entrepreneur to join a start-up as a difficult choice at first, but an opportunity she could not resist. The Boston University graduate is quite fortunate to be able to find her passion early in life. Starting out her professional career as a financial analyst in the US, she quickly realized that numbers were not necessarily her passion. Her love to interact with people and to learn about what drives them pushed her to seek other career alternatives. She contemplated many career choices before ending up choosing marketing as HR was not “sexy” enough back then. Armed with an MBA in Marketing from Elkin B. McCallum Graduate School of Business, she started her career shift as the Marketing and Communication Manager at Global TV.

In the midst of her career path, her life goals of marriage and starting a family were also realized. Not one to pass up one for the other, Monica chose to start her own recruitment consulting firm called Staff Search in 2008. This gave her the flexibility to have a career and to be a loving wife and mother to her family as well. It was through Staff Search that she got to work with and become a friend to Nadiem Makarim, Gojek’s founder and the current Minister of Education and Culture. Realising her potential, Nadiem pitched her an idea of helping to transform Indonesia and make an impact on millions of lives which she could not pass up.

“In my early days at Gojek, my job was not only to take care of our people, I did driver training, I did PR, I did so many things that I never imagined I would do.” Monica recalls. “I joined the company when there were only around 100 people including the call center agents and now that number has grown to more than 5,000. The impact that Gojek has on the change of Indonesia has been phenomenal and this is the same impact we want to make with Yayasan Anak Bangsa Bisa.”

One thing that really resonated and was pivotal in why she joined Gojek is the company’s commitment to help change the lives of millions of people. If you look at Gojek, Social impact is extremely ingrained in the company, “It’s in our DNA.” Monica elaborates. “Since last year, we have been discussing how we can extend our social impact beyond Gojek’s ecosystem. Obviously, our ecosystem has propped up millions of people from our driver partners to merchants, however, there are so many other informal sectors that are untouched. Being in Indonesia, our lives are inseparable from the informal sector from the street vendors to the cleaners. here are so many informal sectors that have contributed to our lives.”

Monica continues: “The conversation started late last year and the idea was to start the foundation sometime by end of this year. But things changed. The pandemic happened and as it spread quickly worldwide and hit Indonesia, we realized that this was something that couldn’t wait. We quickly set up the foundation in order to support all of these people whose livelihoods are dependent on day to day income and that were greatly impacted.”

Driver partners at Gojek lost their income significantly overnight due to the temporary closure of the GoRide business to comply with government regulations. But Gojek’s driver partners and merchants make up only a small portion of these groups of people who are reliant on a day to day income. Looking across the empty streets in Jakarta, there are many more people impacted by the large-scale social restrictions mandated by the government. To Monica, the time to act was now.

“The Senior leadership team at Gojek quickly assembled and donated 25 percent of their salaries as the initial fund to set up the foundation,” Monica explains. “On top of that our employees, united with the same purpose, decided to jump on the bandwagon. All of the merit increases that were supposed