(JP/Ika Krismantari)He is young, talented and a visionary leader any company would dream of but what makes Kevin Mintaraga an ideal CEO (chief executive officer) seems to be his focus not just on profits but on workers’ satisfaction.

“Our focus is to find passion and potential inside the people. ‘People’ is the key word,” the man said.

The 27-year-old is the founder of Magnivate, a Jakarta-based digital agency which has hired 120 young creative minds.

The company started small in 2008 with only six people but now it has turned into the biggest player in the industry handling high profile brands like XL, Unilever, Nestle and many more.

Early this year, the majority stake of Magnivate was acquired by WPP, a London-based leading advertising and public relation company, pushing the company to change its name to XM Gravity to align with WPP’s subsidiary XM Asia, the largest digital agency in the continent.

But most importantly, the acquisition has crowned Kevin the youngest CEO at 26 within WPP’s global networks.

Sitting cozily on a sofa in a cafe in Jakarta, Kevin revealed his business secrets one by one to The Jakarta Post in a short interview session on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon. At first, he humbly said that it was all because of “the grace of God” but in the following explanation, we learn that his strong instincts on business prospects also played significant role.

Kevin was among the first to foresee the huge growth in the digital industry in the country. He started the business in hope of accessing untapped online advertising market, which at that time only stood at 0.25 percent of the total advertising expenditure.

“Now people like you and me, we probably rarely watch TV anymore, we are now glued to our mobile screen or iPad, the point is we are shifting our medium and we are an agency of this shifting age,” he remarked.

His prediction turned to be right after all. In less than five years, the industry grew more than ten fold and his company, as the pioneer, has benefited from this tremendous growth.

Beyond divine intervention and strong intuition, Kevin acknowledges the biggest contributor for his success: people.

Realizing that humans are his most important asset, Kevin spends most of his time talking to and working with his staff. He talks to each individual, asking for passion and plans, making sure that everyone is happy. “When people work with enthusiasm, clients are happy. I make people inside the company happy because happy people make other people happy.”

To put smiles on everyone’s face, he’s gone all out, inventing programs including personality tests, personal development training, routine gatherings, outings and even mobile application that can monitors the emotional state of all the employees.

“When in one week, a person checks in with sad or terrible twices. The bosses will get a notification and they have to actually talk to their subordinates,” he explained.

Is it an ideal workplace or what?

“We are making one,” Kev says.

In his long checkered shirt and thick, black-framed glasses, he looks like any other Jakarta youngsters, but deep inside is a very mature individual, despite being the youngest child in the family of four.

Speaking in a deep and commanding voice, Kevin says his ultimate achievement is seeing people under his nurturing flourish into success.

“My biggest satisfaction is really more in the giving.”

This may explain why he established Project Eden in 2011. Project Eden is an investment company that supports local programmers launch new technology start-ups. So far, the project has launched three products — price comparison website Telunjuk, healthcare application Spot Dokter and mobile game Glass Finger.

Finalist of the 2012 British Council’s International Young Creative Entrepreneur competition, his next plan is to see these products get a good response from the market before developing more.

He also wants his company to maintain its position as the frontrunner and leader in the industry by innovating all the time.

In the meantime, he is enjoying his new role as a husband. Kevin has married three months ago and now every day he is trying to be home before 7 p.m. to have dinner with his wife, Nastasya Saputra.

A happy company, a happy couple and a happy family for the most wanted CEO.

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