Vikram Sinha (indosatooredoo dot com)

The President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration’s focus on boosting Indonesia’s digital economy is seen as a boon for the country’s telecommunications companies, including publicly listed PT Indosat. Despite the higher demand for data services, Indosat has struggled to adjust to what is called “the disruption era” in recent years, an era in which technology and society have advanced at a rate that is much faster than what businesses can naturally adapt to as they face a skills gap, among other issues.

The Jakarta Post’s Prima Wirayani and Yunindita Prasidya sat down recently with Vikram Sinha, the director and chief operating officer of the company, which holds the brand Indosat Ooredoo, to talk about its participation in the Indonesian digital economy, some of the tough calls the company has had to make to stay competitive and its business strategy going forward to stay ahead in an era of constant change. 

Below is an edited excerpt of the interview. 

Question: Developing the Indonesian digital economy is one of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s top priorities. How does Indosat Ooredoo plan to take part in and benefit from this? 

Answer: Indosat will be supporting the Indonesian digital economy agenda by, first of all, committing US$2 billion for a three-year commitment until 2021. The role of telco [telecommunications] is very big in building the digital economy. The backbone of the whole digital economy is data, and who provides the data? It is going through companies like Indosat. 

We are making sure that, [with] the 90 percent of the population that we have in our 4G coverage, we continue to invest in that by improving the latency and the experience.

With that, we will support the digital economy agenda through our initiatives like the Digital Camp, where we upgrade the skill set of people, and also through our partnership model with Facebook and Google. 

We are supporting the whole thing not only through our investment, through our initiatives, but also through our partnership ecosystem.

The issue of the skills gap is being talked about a lot. What kind of skills gap problem is Indosat facing at the moment? 

We need a lot of data scientists. So, we need to train, we need to invest in our people. Similarly, we need to hire for cybersecurity. These are the skill sets that were not needed, but suddenly they are a reality. So, cybersecurity, data scientists, analytical skills, artificial intelligence. Now, we are proactively focusing on either building this or making sure that we are plugging these kinds of skill gaps. 

But, we believe that to have a more sustainable performance and organization, we need to keep investing in our people by upgrading their skills. We need to challenge them. We want our employee learning agility to be very high. 

How do these changes impact your existing employees? Were the changes a driving factor behind the company’s decision to lay off hundreds of workers?

We went through this exercise of right-sizing and new regional ways of working that led to around 677 [people being laid off]. These are tough, not easy decisions, but it is important and one has to be mindful. But what we really focus on is doing it properly. We have been working on it for the last year. First, we have to make sure it is done in a very transparent manner. 

Second, there has to be the right compensation package. What I am happy to share with you is that close to 92 percent of the people accepted the compensation package and we are working with them on helping them post-employment, to work with our partner ecosystem. 

Telco as a sector is going through a lot of disruption. So, you change sooner than later. When I say sooner than later, when you are going through such competition, who are your competition? 

In earlier days it was like Telkomsel, Indosat, XL, competing [against one another]. Now, your competition is coming through OTT [over-the-top media services]. When these kinds of changes are happening, you need to have the right agility in the organization, the speed and support. 

How does the current economic situation in Indonesia affect the way you do business in the country? 

I am a very strong believer that Indonesia, as a country, has fundamentals that are very strong. The current situation globally looks a bit bleak because of the coronavirus and everything, but these are short-term things. 

But that doesn’t change the fundamentals. The fundamentals of this country — the young population; it is full of digital natives, eager to learn — all those things stay very strong. 

There are some challenges and this is where all of us need to work together to mitigate that because, for any of us to do well, first the country has to do well.

So, why are we investing? Because we very strongly believe in Indonesia as a country and we feel that the fundamentals are very strong. And this decade belongs to a country like Indonesia. 

In terms of digitalization efforts, other telecommunications companies, like Telkom for example, are trying to have more digital products, including building data centers. Is Indosat planning to do the same thing in the future? 

Yes, so when it comes to digitalization, we look at it in two steps. One is internal, the second is external. Internally, we are digitalizing and automating our processes as much as possible. Today, my people on the ground can see everything through a simple app. 

From an external point of view, very soon you will see that we will be coming up with more innovative products. 

We have a few things already. We were the first to do an online SIM sale, two to three months back. 

In the coming three months we have more planned. I will not be able to tell you the full details but there are things in the pipeline. 

We want to be on the forefront of the whole digitalization and also cater to our digital natives. They don’t want to be bothered. They want everything to be sorted out on the go. 

What about 5G plans?

Ooredoo Group, Qatar was one of the first telcos to go commercial [with] 5G because the FIFA World Cup is coming up, so they had to prepare themselves well in advance and be ready. We have all the know-how, we have the capability. But when it comes to Indonesia, I think the in next two years, 2020-2021, our focus is on 4G; most of the investment will be going toward 4G. We are waiting for the ecosystem to get ready. When I say ecosystem, it is the device ecosystem, spectrum road map, fiberization.

Having said that, we want to make sure that whatever investment we have now with our equipment, our software, that they are all 5G-ready.

We already started [working toward this plan] last year. We will wait for the whole ecosystem to get ready and then we will work accordingly in line with our plan.

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