The young man had worked a similar job for four years at Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, Australia, where he could get such talents “quite easily”, before moving to Indonesia earlier this year.

“[Indonesia is] actually in a shortage,” he said during a recent discussion in Jakarta about artificial intelligence (AI) and employment. “It’s very hard to find people who, for instance, have a history in applying machine learning or in handling big data.”

He pointed out that a shortage was particularly concerning as Indonesia’s tech industry was “in need of the most digital talent in its history”.

Demand for such talent, which includes software engineers, analysts and data scientists, is expected to rise as Indonesia’s digital economy is predicted to triple in transaction volume from US$27 billion in 2018 to $100 billion by 2025, according to a Google-Temasek report.

Yet, Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said the country had a shortfall of 9 million digital talents to meet a targeted 7 percent economic growth by 2030.

Bima said Bukalapak currently employed about 1,100 people, which the company could make do with even though it would benefit from having more.