Leading with Purpose: A Conversation with Ridzki Kramadibrata of Grab Indonesia

In this episode, Dina H. Sherif sits down with Ridzki Kramadibrata, former CEO and Commissioner of Grab Indonesia, to discuss the transformative power of purpose-driven leadership in shaping Southeast Asia’s future. Ridzki reflects on his leadership journey, the unique challenges of growing a super app in emerging markets, and the critical role of innovation and teamwork in navigating crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, they explore how entrepreneurs and leaders can act as catalysts for sustainable prosperity and societal impact, with lessons that resonate far beyond Indonesia.

This candid conversation dives into building resilient organizations, cultivating values-driven cultures, and leveraging technology to address real-world challenges. Ridzki also shares his vision for Southeast Asia’s role in the global innovation landscape and the legacy he hopes to leave behind.

Key Topics Discussed:

•The role of purpose-driven leadership in navigating uncertainty and inspiring teams.

•Grab Indonesia’s pivot during the pandemic to support micro-entrepreneurs and sustain livelihoods.

•The power of innovation and culture in driving organizational success and societal impact.

•Why entrepreneurs in emerging markets must focus on creating solutions that serve local needs.

•Ridzki’s hopes for Southeast Asia to define its own narrative and become a global player.

Host: Dina Sherif
Produced by Donovan Beck

For Media Inquiries:
Donovan Beck

Communications and Storytelling Coordinator

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship

Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
292 Main St, E38, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142
don_beck@mit.edu

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:24 Conversation with Ridzki

Transcript

0:00

Right? So in this episode, we're very excited to be welcoming Ridzki Kramadibrata, who is the former CEO and President of grab Indonesia, with a long career in the private sector and within Southeast Asia more broadly, I really wanted to invite ritzy to this podcast, because ritzy is, for me, an example of an entrepreneur and a human being who is truly mission driven, who exemplifies decision making that are deeply, that is deeply anchored in a sense of purpose. And I think growing businesses in global growth markets. And growing a business in a in a country like Indonesia can be extremely difficult, and he makes it seem easy, and will demonstrate the kind of values and and deep thinking that is required in building a venture in a global growth market. And I hope that all of you will enjoy the conversation that I will have with him and learn as much from him as I have over the over the years. Thank you for joining us, and I hope that you leave feeling inspired and hopeful. Hey, so, so excited to welcome you Ridzki Kramadibrata to to our podcast. You know, you and I have, our relationship has been built now over what a span of Since COVID started, starting with my dear friend Tirza, when I met her in DC, and she said, you know, Dina grab has been doing really amazing things in Indonesia. And I said, well, we need to capture that at the Legatum center. And she connected me to you, and that was beginning of our journey. I want to ask you a very personal question to start us off, because aside from grab and your amazing success, not just as an entrepreneur, but someone who is in a big corporate and you spent your life working in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. You have a very unique leadership style, and you have a very unique way of showing up for your team. And I've seen it live. What does leadership mean to you? Okay, thank you, Nina, before I got to that question, the pleasure is mine, definitely, you're right. It started few years ago during COVID. You know, I can't believe that I'm here podcasting with you. I know I can't believe it either. It's just right right by side the main street in Cambridge. So it's wonderful weather as well today. So yes, it's been an amazing journey. I think I've been too fortunate, in my opinion, in all of this. But yes, leadership plays a little bit part of it. To my opinion, to me is, as a leader, you have to lead the way and show the way. I mean, like you hear about that, but I think it's much more complicated than how it's formulated in a sentence. You need to gather information. You need to digest it. You need to find gist as well how things will lead, you know, the business, the innovations, the team, to something that is meaningful to them. So that's kind of like building a purpose to them. Of course, I'm a man that is believing so much about team building, teamwork, how talents play a really, really important part in, you know, achieving your goals. So definitely in the process, it's not just me, you know, leading people ways. It's actually a process of, you know, discussions, you know, accommodating informations, but most importantly, to get, you know, a conclusions of where are we heading to. And then once you actually formulate it, you can't believe people will really, really follow and really, really, you know, believe in and do whatever it takes to actually to achieve it. You know, I think sometimes being in a position of authority is really difficult. I think it's easy when we know the solutions right. Sometimes decision making is easy. It's a problem we know the solution and you can just execute. But sometimes, when you're hit with a pandemic, with a company that's still in the kind of middle of its journey, like, like when you were CEO of grab Indonesia, we really don't know what we're supposed to do. And I, you know, when I speak to my foundry fellows here at the Legatum center, I always say, There's no such thing as a leader. There's something called leadership, and we need leadership when we really don't know the answer. That's when we need leadership the most, right? So when, when the pandemic hit, and nobody really had a clue what to do in Indonesia, and you were faced with this decision, and you were at the time grab was really just. Which mainly a ride a ride hailing app. And obviously, no one would want to get in a car or get on the back of a motorcycle in the face of a pandemic. But for sure, you didn't really know what to do, and you had to really spend time with your team, mobilize them. What did what did that time look like for you as ritzy, what was, what was really going through your mind, and how were you dealing with this very difficult process of decision making at a time where nobody had any answers and everyone was really shooting in the dark, interesting questions, but first of all, I beck to differ on your first statement over my course of, you know, career over decades, that has never been any easy decisions. Decisions always, you know, difficult and tough, because you always see the you know, plus side, the downsides, the upsides of decisions. You have, you know, opposing, you know, people. You have, people that supporting decisions. So leaders, job is to assess all of those you know, aspects and taking some risk out of it, because, you know there will be implications to your decisions making. And then it is actually very important to involve, you know, more people in the decision making. It's there's also a reason why it's called Leadership, because it's not single person. It's actually a group of people to decide. And then, of course, within that group of people, you will see you know different opinions as well. And then maybe in certain points, it takes a leader to make a hard decision, hard choice. How do you create a space to allow for all these different opinions to exist at the same time? It's a culture, I guess. I think we need to build the culture well, where people could speak up their minds. I think in the Western world, maybe it is much a common practice to do that, but maybe in the eastern part of the world. It's not such a common practice. So you have to encourage people in the beginning, just to be honest with you, yeah, people are not automatically built in the eastern part of the world to speak up, speak up, or to speak up to somebody with a title of CEO. Exactly. It takes some encouragement to do that, but once you actually, you show that it's not only allowed, but you are welcome to do that, then people will start to actually, to say their minds and leadership then built. Now, coming back to your second questions, all pandemic, I'm glad it's actually you know, behind us, behind us. For now, for now. Now we know that you know unpredictable things are, you know, probably ahead of us. But yes, pandemic is one of the example where it was an extremely difficult positions. I thought a little bit about, you know, how leader shows way lead away by, you know, gathering all the informations and try to digest it, to be able to formulate it to something that you could do. But during the pandemic, there's little information to no information. I think the whole world didn't know what to do as well, not just me, not just, you know, the team, but some people just dove right in and just started, you know, doing what they thought was best without really having the time to really think through. You didn't do that. We didn't do that. I mean, like, I remember that one of the first questions we had was that, how long this will last? I still remember there are some, you know, people taking a wild guess that, oh, this will be over in about three months, six months. Oh, I had somebody say, this will be done in two weeks, two weeks, yeah. And we know, Oh, no. How long that it lasted, right? So during that uncertainty period, it is an importance of regrouping and then set your priorities. And during my role at that time, of course, the priorities, and you can hear it is the what is at stake the most are the micro entrepreneurs that within the platforms. These are the drivers, the merchants that suddenly seeing their business you know, changed significantly and impacts their lives, not only their lives, but also their families. So it's an easy, you know, thought process. We focus on them and see what we could do to them. And of course, there's a process in between. I thought about, you know, how I team? We talk to the team, what do they think? And then we try to structure it as well, but focusing on the this micro entrepreneurs, and then we see that pivoting the business is one good way to do it, still using the much of the resources that we have accumulated in terms of technology, in terms of services. But pivoting to toward how we could actually serve their business this micro entrepreneurs better. And then, of course, deliveries, in the case of, you know, Southeast Asia has played the best, I think we partly changed how people behaviors, you know, took place during the pandemic. And it enables also to to help governments in terms of logistics, because during the pandemic, logistics, especially the last mile, was one of the most difficult thing. But with the help of these micro entrepreneurs, we could reach, you know, the areas where it was, you know, very unlikely to actually tap into. So you use your platform to get services to people, but it really needed a mindset shift. You had to kind of reframe your offering, right? It was less about getting someone from point A to point B, and it became the reverse, exactly. How do you get the point B to the person at point A, exactly? But that required a lot of new learning and a lot of creativity. That was really where innovation was happening, right? Yeah. I mean, like, if you I like the way you put it point A to point B, and then point B, now it's actually point B to point A. You know, many great ideas in the world. It's just a simple concept. And concept like that works really, really well in the time where it's needed the most. And the momentum was right, the pre works was there, and then suddenly the chains of the mindset helped everyone to solve majority of the problems. And then you kept purpose at the very core, because what was really keeping you up at night was making sure that all the people that you had provided income for were not going to lose their income. Okay, you wouldn't believe how much these things kept me at night. Oh, I do. Because I know you as a person, I can imagine that you were deeply concerned about all the people who'd be potentially losing access to income, yeah. But on the positive side as well, it is also, not only kept me wake up at night. But also, I mean, like this kind of things where you so purpose driven, mission driven, and you're impacting so many lives, so many, you know, people's economies, you wake up so energized as well, yeah, thinking about the positive impact that you're making, you and the team, yeah. And then what kind of new things that you will do to make a difference, to make a difference, and this is really an amazing part of it. I totally get it and can imagine. So I'm gonna ask you a question, a little bit about failure now. Oh, because you know, when we decide to engage in any form of leadership, all throughout your career, for sure, there were failures. But a good mentor of mine always said failure is only failure if you haven't learned the lessons that you need to learn, but over the span of your career, if there is one leadership failure that you can remember that impacted you, what was it and are you willing to share? Yeah, so I think failures is an interesting subject, because at one point, especially in our cultures, exactly, failure is not always allowed. People blame for failures. So I think you know, if you're so irresponsible in taking decision and make failures, maybe there's reasons where people actually blame on you, and then the culture is probably built on that. Because, you know, our cultures, maybe in the past, was not so much about, you know, structuring issues and then addressing it, you know, constructively, and then where it's actually built the cultures that people, you know, why did you do such things? But if you do it in a responsibly, in sort of responsible way, and structure it, you've done as much as possible to avoid the values and when failures happen, then people understand it's actually beyond the control, and it's this, it's the structure that you need to help build to make the organizations make failures. Okay, okay? Because otherwise, you know, you don't make foolish mistakes and you don't get creative, then you don't get creative. So you you actually have to allow a set of, you know, values to actually, to enable for the organizations to become more agile and yet creative and innovative as well. Well in the past, I've had, you know, as you can guess, probably, I mean, like I, one of the leaders, job is to take risk. And I told you, you know, earlier, that that has never been easy decisions. No, I've met, you know, several mistakes, to be honest with you. I mean, like I've done, you know, telco businesses, airlines and then now, platform businesses and airlines. You know, I. Could, you know, confess that there's so many, you know, rude mistakes that I did as well, and it's actually affects the, not only the company, but how people will use the airlines, sure, and in the airlines are a tricky business, right? Tricky business, exactly. So much safety involved, so much safety you have to, actually to prioritize safety, but yet, your Indian is a business, you have to actually to self sustain your your own ventures as well. And in platform business, I think there's few mistakes that we've made. I've made as well. I mean, like we're so creative, we're creating so many verticals, you know, surfaces. That sounds really, really, you know, exciting in the beginning, but it didn't take up. So I mean, like mistakes like this happen, and we just assume it, as long as you're very responsible in the process, then it's our common you know, it's our risk actually to take, and no one's to blame. But how did you I'm gonna try to get you to open up a bit. How did you feel at those moments of failure? It is number one. If it's, it's, it's, depends on the impact of the failures. Yeah, because failure can impact us a lot as humans. Right? Exactly we hold ourselves, especially you. I know you to very high standards. And when you, when you do go through a failure, there's a lot of emotions that come to the forefront, you know? How do you deal with those multitude of emotions that come with with a failure, until you learn what you need to learn from it. Yes, so if it's number one, it is. There's no use for you to regret what has happened. Yeah, of course, you learn from the mistake, but you don't regret, because regretting is just taking you nowhere. No, I think the key things here is to quickly learn from the mistakes. I like the quick debrief. You know, things, when you face something, you make mistakes. Your team make mistakes. I make mistakes. We do quick breathing debriefing. And then, because the momentum is there, and then you can learn. You can learn, you know, as effective as possible, you take more time to do debriefing and understanding what mistakes that you have made. It becomes more irrelevant, and you tend to forget, you know, few details that is actually very, very important. So the key things is here is to quickly learn from and have the team to debrief together with you. You know, so many mistakes we've made. Sometimes the impact was not only to to the company, to the stakeholders, but sometimes there's personal, you know, impact as well. Absolutely, I think that's the most difficult part of it sometimes, yeah, yep. So I've had a share of mistakes that I've made that, you know, had some implications to my family, and then I had to definitely quickly reviewing it and learning from it and as much as possible not to repeat it. And you know, the best is actually to get better out of it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's only one way, and that's forward, but you have to make peace with some of the things that happened in our past, right? I like that. I like that. You know? I've, I've had this, someone telling me a tragedy, plus time, it's comedy. You look at some your past mistakes, past tragedy, you that as it's actually a pass over time, it becomes a little bit, you know, you you tend to love, oh, I don't know about that for me, maybe in Indonesia you can find humor, but I don't Know, Egyptians aren't so much the same. So, yes, don't be too don't take yourself too seriously. You learn quickly. You learn fast and recover from it and gets better. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to, I want to take us a little bit so, you know, here at the Legatum center, we think about entrepreneurship and innovation as a means and not an end. So we don't, we don't for us, it's not just about seeing more and more entrepreneurs. It's really more about what entrepreneurship can do for society. And so we talk a lot, a lot about entrepreneurship and innovation as a pathway to achieving sustainable prosperity, specifically within global growth markets in countries like Indonesia like yours, or Egypt like mine. Thinking about entrepreneurship and innovation as a strategic strategy for government to really create prosperity hasn't really been there. Oftentimes it happens by accident. It's not as intentional as one. Would hope, even though to create economic prosperity, you really want to see bottom up growth, and you need to see that through traditional entrepreneurship, and you need to see that through innovation driven entrepreneurship, I think you, you have witnessed live the power of entrepreneurship and innovation in creating prosperity in a country like Indonesia, right? Why is it so important for entrepreneurs today, specifically, specifically in markets like ours, to really understand that they have a big and critical role to play in achieving prosperity in their countries? Yeah, I really believe that entrepreneurs is the core of the economy. I mean, like, Where will economy go with all of these entrepreneurs? But entrepreneurs come in, you know, there's a big, you know, size companies, entrepreneurships, but there's also, you know, small to medium, small to medium size. And I see the patterns in many countries. I thought it was Indonesia specific, but then I studied and learned it's actually quite common across countries that the dominant players and the dominant contributions comes actually from small and medium enterprises. The problem is, I think, lies from the whether the government allows the the environment for them to thrive, for them not to only to thrive, but to, you know, grow, grow. And this is a typical problem in the growth market. So what is more important is for the governments to really, really think about how to embrace this business, how to give, you know, platforms for them to grow, and how to create like ecosystem and environment where they could more than thrive, they could expand. Because in the end, you know, there's so much that governments could do in terms of, you know, subsidizing economy, or, you know, building, you know, initiatives, you will need to, actually, to for a country to really, really grow, you need to to really make sure that these players really, really grow. So that's one side of the economy, the small and medium enterprises. But also, then they're the grabs of the world. Then there's the grabs of the worlds. And I think with the technology nowadays, the enablement of, you know, growth markets to play, to play a better positions in terms of, you know, creating technologies and things, it's much more feasible and easier, you know, you say that. But here in the United States, I'm not sure that your average person at MIT or Harvard would think, Oh, Indonesia. Now that's a country where innovation is happening. Yeah, I think that's kind of misperceptions. That's right, that's happening. A lot of things has changed, and has been going on, I think, since the past decade, with the enablement of the new technology people could create, you know, innovations, technologies, you know, even from home. And then, of course, scale with the help of of course, investors, feces and rest to help grow to a sizable business. And this kind of revolutions, the tech revolutions happening in the growth market, including Indonesia, people you know, starting to create amazing innovations, yeah, and then doing things that was not possible in the past, but now it's so possible and challenging the businesses from the established markets, like in the US Europe, of course, taking advantage from their own markets, first for Southeast Asia's case, of course, Southeast Asia market, I know, in Africa, Latin America, similar things happening. And I think that will be the misperceptions that happening right now. You know, many people in the developed market didn't think that the revolution is going so rapidly and so fast, but it is going that fast lately. You know, I have a good friend. His name is Christopher Schroeder. He spent a lot of time in the Middle East starting he was really fascinated with this growth and evolution of tech startups in the Middle East, specifically post all of the uprisings that happened in 2011 to the extent that he actually wrote a book called Start uprising. And he always says something he said. He says that within emerging markets or global growth markets, countries like Egypt or Indonesia or or in Nigeria, the introduction of the smartphone was a game changer, because that gave access to your everyday person, to technology that was extremely powerful. Wonderful. Do you find this to be true in Indonesia? Yeah, I think it is true. And without the smartphone grab wouldn't be able to be what it is. Yeah. I think the the predictions in the past that saying, like, you know, chip sets will be much smaller, much affordable, but yet, you know, faster it has place. It's finally plays a part through the growth market. But few things that was not, you know, people was not So paying attention in the you know, two decades ago that mobility, like you mentioned, I mean, like mobile device now, has become so easily, so affordable. And then don't forget the existence of broadband right now, yeah, that's right, has, you know, enable many, you know, innovations that was not possible to be made in the past. Now, with the existence of those, you know, you know, very fast chipset in a mobile and then broadband existed in, you know, growth market like, you know, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, I actually think we were in a better position, right? Because when, when, when the mobile phone came into existence, Africa was able to leapfrog in terms of technology. We were much faster than the United States even. And there, I think there's a lot of potential for global growth markets to leapfrog, because we were not weighed down by old technology. We can immediately leapfrog and embrace new technology. I think the issue is the Do we have the will, the political will to do that? Sometimes I like leapfrog terminology because it is what important? Yeah, and with the technology, I think, I think the growth market has two advantages. Number one, the technology that enables them to live rock. But number two is also very important, a market of consumers that's so keen to adapt new things. Yes, you see how, you know, people adapt, you know, new technologies. You know, much easier, easier in the growth market, and there's this need for services, right? Exactly, because, you know, maybe in an established market like US Europe, things has been established, and then people don't need, you know, any extra things. You know, you go to your groceries, it's kind of like, you know, it's standard. But in Indonesia, for examples, it's so different kind of quality if you go to the brick and mortar, and depends on real areas as well, urban center, exactly, yeah, absolutely. And then with the, you know, existence of new technology, there's no difference. For examples, telemedicine, for examples. I mean, it used to be in remote area. It's hard to access doctors, but with the existence of telemedicine, they could access the same quality of medical service to the ones that you know receive it in the metropolitan area. So the adoption level is different because people are so much in need of same qualities. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I want to ask you a question about values. Wow, because I know you think about values a lot. I know I think about values a lot, and you have to make a decision every day, almost to stick by core values that we have learned. But when you're an entrepreneur and an in a in a rapidly changing market, sometimes your values are constantly being questioned, and sometimes you really have to think very hard about where your red line is. You know, what line Are you absolutely not willing to cross? And then sometimes your values are what really lead you to staying in the course of making a difference in the face of all the different challenges that entrepreneurs face in markets like like in Indonesia, or actually, more broadly, Southeast Asia, because they're all rapidly changing and growing markets. How important is it for entrepreneurs to really spend time thinking and understanding their values and what they stand for and what their red lines are. So I think failures is at the core of our initiatives. I think things like visions, cultures, you really need to think through it and believe in what's your path to it. And then this is another key things, bring in people, like minded people along with you, along to actually to fight for it. You know as to this market like you know, you. As Europe, I think values have been built for long, I think for centuries, maybe. And then it's not that difficult, that hard for people to, you know, stick to their values, because it's you're surrounded with people that already quite understand. I think regulatory environments in the United States ensure that certain values are upheld, right exactly, and then it has built in the cultures and people already, you know, automatically know that it is there. But in the growth markets, you you tend to kind of like, open the way. You're like, you're you're fighting not only for your cause, but it's also for, you know, setting an example, setting an example, because generations, you will be surprised, there's actually many people striving to fight the same values, and then by showing examples, and then by showing it to the world that you could do it, then same, like minded people, even though maybe not in the same organizations as You are, but looking at you that you were actually seeing how you behave, we behave. I remember last year, some of the students who met you here on campus, you know, they came to me, they said, you know, Pa ritski is a legend in Tunisia because he stands for certain values. That's also a heavy burden. It is. But I think it is part when you actually do it on a mission, that you're so aware that there are so many people there looking for an example that you could be successful by stand up to your values. Then you're kind of like planting seeds. Then you will see soon, people, you know, starting to, you know, showing the worlds as well. Then you you suddenly realize that you're not so alone, yeah, you actually have companies, yeah, and then to have that. And then together with them, build a new kind of, you know, you know, value driven. You know, entrepreneurs value driven, you know, businessmen and setting up, you know, the regions and countries to for a better futures like that. I think it's so fulfilling. I agree. I think we need more, yeah, even here in the United States, you know, I think purpose is so important, and we don't spend enough time talking about the importance of purpose and values when you start a venture, but also as you grow it, because that's always brought into question you're all these pulling forces, pulling you in different directions can take you away from your purpose. Can also sometimes make you say, oh, you know what? Maybe I'll turn a blind eye to a certain value I have. These are tough decisions, you know, and when I think about you, because also during the pandemic, you made some really hard choices about partnering with the Indonesian government. And I think a lot of your decisions were very much anchored in your purpose of ensuring that those who are dependent on grab Indonesia for income were able to continue to have access to the income. And you had to build a strategic partnership and take on the government as an ally. That's something that a lot of emerging market entrepreneurs have to do, but it's not always easy to work with with the government, partner with them to chart a new path or a new way of doing things. Yeah. So if you're giving advice to a new on a new innovation driven entrepreneur across global growth growth markets could be in Southeast Asia, could be Africa, could be Middle East, could be Latin America. We all have difficult governments to deal with, and not so difficult. I think, you know, it's not as straightforward as people think. I think governments, at least in my country, sometimes the government is extremely difficult, but sometimes that's a huge opportunity to really create change and shift mindsets and create a new opening for new systems to evolve. And I think you did that in Indonesia. So what advice would you have to entrepreneurs on how they can really work with their governments as an ally? So yes, governments come sometimes could be quite difficult to deal with, but I think we don't blame them. I mean many, especially for the tech startups, many of the things that we do didn't exist before, so it's hard for them to sometimes to absorb, to understand, let alone to set policy on how to regulate it. So so don't blame on them on this. So I think number one advice is to build a platform of communication, because you need to communicate. You need to understand what's their way of thinking. And. And they need to understand also, what the reasons that we do things, and mind me many hours and hours to do that, and then, let alone the we understand that the time of the government's very, very, you know, it's, it's difficult to get, but you had to fight for it, because, you know you would, you would need that to be able to serve your purpose. Number two, I think my advice is you really need to believe in what you do, and you do Avengers. If you don't believe what you do, it's hard to convince people. You need to do some internalization, internalizing yourself as well, making sure that you really do what you believe. And then you believe what you do, because then it's hard to convince people if you really look no so not so believing to what you do, right? And then in between, of course, there will be, you know, arguments, you know, again, agreements, disagreements, that happens? Yeah, and I think the guiding light through that is that again you look at yourself again, do you do the things for the right reasons or not? Once you know that you do things for the right reasons, you know people, in the end, eventually, will come aboard. Will come apart. Whatever the situation is, I found it quite consistent. You need to actually, to ask yourself and team first, you believe that you do the right for the right reasons. In fact, I told my team several times, if any of you ever doubting that you do things for the right reasons, just come to me directly, and we'll do a discussions and read. Let's do a debate as well immediately, because if you don't believe that you do the for the right reasons, I cannot actually trust you to talk to other people outside, because then it'll be a wrong message. So once you sorted all of those things, definitely things will be much easier. And I found it like, you know, in the case of Indonesia's then, government is really, really supportive, like the, you know, all of these SMEs going to digitalizations. It's very much supported then, in fact, now they understand the pain points that these small businesses, micron small businesses, needs to be formalized, giving some kind of like, you know, benefits as well in the process for a bigger purpose. Because then government realized the importance of this small and medium enterprises. So then what happens is that we went on road shows, you know, to city, cities to, you know, remote cities in in Asia, to Papua, to Sulawesi to Sumatra. And we did, you know, road shows together. And this is the result of those engagement, long engagements, and then believing in what you do and doing it for the right reasons. I love that, and it kind of brings, brings us back to the original point. If you're an entrepreneur and you see yourself as a vehicle to achieving prosperity in your country, you start to function very differently than if you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking, Oh, I just need to make money. I need to give money back to my shareholders, and profit becomes your ultimate goal, as opposed to, I think you function very differently when you're thinking, well, profit is important, but the change I can create in my country is more significant as kind of the guiding departure point you show up differently to different stakeholders in the ecosystem, right? Yes, I agree with that, yeah, yeah. So I know that for you, culture is really, really important. I've seen it live. I've also seen how your team I've seen how they work together. I've seen how dedicated they are, how open and honest. And you know, there's always this debate, what's more important building culture or strategy, or is it both? And I know that in your case, building a culture was really, really important for you, and I, I imagine it was important for you even before you took on this role at grab. And I imagine it will be important to you long after. Can you, can you share with those listening your thoughts around building a culture in an organization can bottom up and and what is important to you in that culture? I think it's important, especially when you're in a mission to achieve something and you're facing mountains, it's a steep, you know, way forward. I mentioned this earlier to bringing in like minded people. Yeah, people lie though ritzy, but then it, I hate to say this, but, you know, some, sometimes people are really good at talking a good talk. Yeah, so, so now this is the key. I mean, like people lie during interviews. Maybe then, sure, then you, you, you onboarding, you know, different kind of you know that you thought you onboarding like minded people, but then it is not. What do you do? Hence, this cultures plays a very important role. You know, many, many companies says they have cultures, but it ended up only on posters, on emails without giving examples. So number one, giving examples is very, very important. You cannot convince team that you live certain values if you only send emails but you don't be seen tested to those values. You have to showcase if you face, you know, a tough decisions, but then you you choose to actually live up to your cultures that you have conveyed before. People see examples that you've been, you know, cornered to a certain situations. But then you make tough decisions to defend the cultures and prioritize cultures first. I think that's very important examples. And showing examples, I mean people that will spread and people will really, really convince that you really do live a certain values. Number two is, of course, you know, we jokingly, you know, mentions about interviewing process, but then you found out different people. So again, not just to put, you know, cultures in posters or whatever it is, you really have to actually regularly, you know, assess cultures in the organizations in to the team as well. So it has to be regularly, you know, assessed. What do you do when you find somebody who is an outlier? Do you get rid of them? Number one is, of course, to develop, we give feedbacks. You know, people. You give feedback. You know, remember, you remember last year when you were here? Yes, sir. Mustafa was here. The Yeah, he, you know, he said, he says to me, said, Dina, you know, one of the lessons that I've learned in business and helping other entrepreneurs build businesses over the years, is that when somebody shows you through actions that their values don't match the values that are important to the culture you are building, you have to get them out fast. But then I know other people who say you need to give people space to evolve. Where do you stand? I stand for the second. For the latter, because I've seen also examples where people changed. We give good. It's actually the purpose as well. I mean, you bring in some like minded people, but also you try to get people to be like minded people, maybe certain people you know didn't really you know, yeah, into that values. But once you give examples, you give feedbacks. I've seen people you know really, really change. But of course, the first you know mindset will also applies. At a certain point you need to have deadlines as well. You cannot, you know, let people you know, slip, slip, not changing, and then dragging too long of a time, because that will drag the organization. Yeah, there will be tough decisions as well. In the end, if it's actually you've given a chance and you've given fair feedbacks and open feedback, but not even you know, you're seeing an effort being given by certain people. You have to make tough decisions. How do you make those tough decisions? Once you've gone through those process, it'll be very objectives. You have to be very objective. You cannot be subjective. No, I get it, but, you know, sometimes making a tough decision when you're a really kind person is hard. Once it's structured and objectives, even though I'm a kind, you know, kind of personality, the way you said, Thank you for believing me as a kind person, by the way. But then one is structures, one is objectives, you know, the reasons, then you can't fail objectively. No, emotions, nothing. It is just because of it just doesn't fit. It doesn't fit. Yeah, and how does culture fit with strategy? Because I believe this just my interpretation of what I've seen from you, that they're both deeply intertwined, but oftentimes we teach them as separate things, but in your What are, what is your belief of how culture and strategy really fit together? I found it actually many people found it is difficult to find an organization with like minded people, yeah? So once. So you as a different person, not me, people, you found a very fitting organization of like minded people. Honestly, they will tend to be very loyal. They're less about materialistic. Of course. You know, we fight as hard to actually, to give, you know, better compensations and things, but they will care less about that. They will be more like this is an organization that I find it fits in. It's mission, loyal to this mission, loyal to this mission. I've seen that like, you know, obviously tears is one of my closest I've seen how loyal she is. That is not an easy thing to achieve, and I think that's just because of the example that was set, and what the keeping the purpose at the very center, right? So I want to ask you, you know, since this is MIT, right, and MIT is about technology, and we're about deep tech too, right? And AI and I would say some of the more advanced technologies right now are starting to proliferate the world. But a lot of emerging markets are really scared of some of these new advanced technologies, like AI, digital assets, cryptocurrency, but, but these are these new technologies are just tools, and I think that there are a lot of fears right now with from governments about what some of these new technologies are going to do in their countries. Are, are they going to be faced with an even bigger job unemployment crisis, or what should they be doing so in a country like Indonesia, and I would say, thinking more broadly about Southeast Asia in your mind, how can we better embrace and adopt some of these new advanced technologies to create prosperity, and How can governments start looking at things differently, so that some of the entrepreneurs who are really building ventures in this space stay in our countries and don't come here. You know, yesterday, I was in a round table discussion about angel investing in the Middle East, and one of the entrepreneurs, he's in biotech, and he left, you know, he left Jordan, and he's building his business here. Another one of the entrepreneurs, again, is in biotech, amazing engineer, left Egypt, and is here in Boston. We want these entrepreneurs to stay in their countries, but yet, they feel that they can't, they don't have the space to engage in R and D, doing things properly, have the right, supportive regulatory environments. I think we we need to, even at the Legatum center, we need to do better at having conversations with policymakers about what some of these technologies mean mean, and what they can actually do to the advancement of our own countries, not just from an economic perspective, but from more of a inclusive prosperity perspective. What are your thoughts on on how we can better integrate all of these advanced that are coming. They're coming anyway. There's nothing we can do about it. But how is it that we can stay ahead of the curve as opposed to finding ourselves behind the curve? I think the pattern has been there for long. New technologies, as you mentioned, comes anyway. Yeah, it happens in the past. I mean, you wouldn't believe when automobile was first exist. In existence, yeah, in UK, the ultimate, the ultimate innovation. Exactly back then in UK, there was a so ridiculous policy in anticipations of the automobile, that was called, I think, a red flag policy, if I'm not mistaken, red flag regulations. So you know, this was so funny. So everyone, anyone with automobiles, it was not as fast as today, definitely would need to have two people in front of the automobile, walking, yeah, and then carrying red flags. Oh, my goodness, you wouldn't believe it, right? I did not know that. And then, of course, as it's become more advanced, they they just got rid of that regulations, because it become irrelevant. Yeah, so you know, people you know, don't blame the governments, even people at that time you know, act, you know, weirdly, strangely to new things. And now it comes the AI, you know, the large language models, whatever it is. I think the key here is for us to because nobody knows it's I think it's the same, like pandemic. Nobody knows where this will lead to. I. Yeah, because it's going so fast, which means we knew we need new learning. We need to create space for that learning exactly, and not be afraid. Not Be afraid what is very important for us to keep on engaged and learning to each other where this could lead to and then there will be, you know. You know, different triggers to make it you know differently. It's suddenly, you know, because it's like, now, like companies become is, like competing in this AIS, so they're kind like, you know, creating new innovations out of it. It could lead to something else that we wouldn't know. And then it is very important for us to, you know, discuss together. I mean, like learning together as well, and then seeing from the positive side of it, and many positive side of it, and as much as possible to to manage the the negative sides of it. I know, even, you know, educational institutions, you know, trying to understand as well how to deal with this, which students as well, you know, using AIS to do their, you know, assignments and work. But I think our friend chat, GBT, yeah. I mean, like it is, it is becoming, you know, commonalities, right now, I see, but these things can be used to create efficiency if we use them properly, and they can be used to create damage. I know, even myself now I tend to use, you know, AIS to help me. Don't need so much, you know, personal assistance these days. I mean, like, just to be honest with you, yeah, could help me to actually build, you know, at least, you know, the core, you know, structures, and then I could do, you know, my things, yeah, on my own. It helps me a lot. And I know lots of people being helped a lot by the existence of AIS, but you need people that knows how to use this technology for good ways. What brings us back to values? Brings back to values, and then I think the discussions will have to come back again to values. You know, whether it is companies, governments, educational institutions. How could we make values as the guiding light to actually purpose and purpose definitely? Yeah, I agree with that. I agree it's not easy, though. So you know, you're the one who brought up purpose again, and I because I think purpose is so important, right? And I don't know that we educate students to really think about purpose, although I think lately at MIT, there's been a there's been a healthy debate about, are we using science and technology for good, or are we using it not for evil? Because it could be both ways. And I think purpose is what determines which direction you go in. And I, you know, ritzy, I've seen you as a CEO, I've seen you as a friend, I've seen you as a father, I've seen you as a husband, like I've seen you in your different roles. And I think purpose is really important to you. How is it that you think of purpose and how you navigate all of the different aspects of your life. Thanks for asking that. I mean, like, maybe it's a process. I'm not becoming what I am just like that. I think it's through process, through decades. You know, maybe in my younger version of me, I was not even a father, so I didn't know how actually to be a father, that's right. And then once you become a father, then you try to think about how you merge your values in your professional lives to be a good father as well. So it's a process. But again, I think it comes back to two things. Number one, doing things for good reasons. It's always me and my principles. And as my career grew, I know that I will have more power to do it. So then for me, it is more the purpose to create benefits in a way through what I do to as many as people, actually, more people that I could actually be doing to actually to get them benefited from what I do. And then setting example of this to the team member, to my families, and they start to believe in me as well, that I do it for good reasons. That's why you see probably my my wife, my my kids. You know, they're so keen to actually to be with me. I'm proud, yeah? Because they see the look of pride. I looked at your wife in class the other day and I saw pure pride. Yeah, so beautiful. Thank you. Because they also believe in me, and they also see the impacts that I'm making to many people, and that's where the pride came from, because they know that I do for the right reasons. I do things for the right reasons. I hope I could do my share to show this to the world. That there's never been a perfect, you know, situations, but the way that you involve people, you know, that will make people believe in you, and they will. They will do their shares, you know, once you actually convincing them that it's possible to so again, it's about, you know, I talked to Mark Allen earlier as well. I think myself like more like a candle, where I just don't, you know, I don't, you know, just light up what's around me. But my purpose is also to light up other candles as many as possible, so then people could be the examples to the world. And I hope I do my shares of that part. And I really hope that it's successful in a way. I take, you know, not not lightly, but i i care much less about, you know, methodal achievements, but I take seriously about how do we make impact and we influence people in a good way to make the world a better world, and where does your Faith fit in, you know, and I think about your your example of a candle, I immediately in my mind, you know, I, I'm Muslim, and the word light, Noor is mentioned so many times in our faith, yes, and I, for me, the lesson I take from that has always been. You have to be a source of light in everything you do, even when you're experiencing loss, deep loss. And I know you have experienced deep loss, and I have experienced deep loss, and you need to find a way to find the light entrepreneurs, very difficult journey. It's a very lonely journey when you're building a venture, it's even lonelier when you're building a venture in a very difficult, volatile market. How do you continue to find a way to be a source of light and to continue to also help others hold on to their own light? So faith is my source of energy, yeah, definitely, I take seriously, you know, of faith, because, again, I spoke about, you know, believe in what you do and do what you believe. It's actually maybe originating from the faith. So I know that I'm not here in the world, not for a purpose. Everyone has their own roles. And, you know, sometimes people seeing me like, wow, you're quite successful, relatively. But I take it as a role instead. This is a role that I am being the responsibility to be in and I need to be as responsible as possible to show examples, and then I can actually, I can stand before you know in the afterlife that I've done my part. I've done my part and responsibly, and that's the least that I could hope. Yeah, that's beautiful. I think our time, our journeys, are so actually very, very short. You know, I always say very long days, very, very short years, extremely short years, and Time just flies, I know, and in the face of time flying by, you really have to hold on to creating meaning and impact before your time actually ends. So ritzy. My last question to you, because I'm a big believer in hope and the need for hope, and we're living really difficult times in the world right now. We have wars, various climate climate catastrophes. Southeast Asia is a victim to that. I think there's a lot of struggle right now in the world, and people are really facing a hard time finding their way, but there's also a lot of cause for hope. And you know, I drive a lot of hope when I when I hear your story, and when I think of what you have done with your life, through your throughout your career journey. And I think, wow, Southeast Asia is lucky because they have a great example of an entrepreneur like you and many others. But what are you most hopeful about when it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation in Southeast Asia today? I think I. What I'm most hopeful about is that I believe in Southeast Asia. It's a region of 600 million people. What my hope is that, and I believe in it as well. I mean, in the decade from now, two decades from now, the world will see South Asia, not just, you know, geographical map, geographical locations in the world, but it will become an important players in the global mapping. I know there's so many challenges. There's so many, you know, mountains that we'll have to actually to conquer. However, there's so many opportunities lies there as well. And my hope is that we don't depend on, you know, of course, we collaborate, but we don't depend on someone else for our faith in the futures. But I believe that, you know, Southeast Asian people will define the course to be, you know, play to play, actually a better part and more important role in the global mapping. In the future, so many things will happen. I know you mentioned issues about, you know, climate sustainability, tech, education, talent, whatever it is, infrastructures, but I believe that together, we could solve that problem and create our own solutions to it as well. I mean, what a beautiful way to end, if you you know, to truly believe that Southeast Asia is on a path to to really owning its own destiny. That is a wonderful, very, I think, for me, inspiring piece of hope. You're too kind. Dana, I wish I was too kind. But, you know, I also I wish for the same for my region. Yes, I think it's time for people across global growth markets to really own their own narrative and to be creating the very solutions to their own problems internally within our own countries, and so I think it's a it's a beautiful message to share with everyone. So I thank you for your time. Much welcome, and also for being who you are, and for coming here to share a little piece of your story with everyone else. I love being here. We love having you. Thank you so much.