Innovation From Women in Tech
From “Ramadan Ekstra” to “Gala Dana Palu”, this is the innovation from 3 great women in Tokopedia.
To commemorate International Women’s Day 2019, we honor and recognize the impact of great women in Indonesia. Especially in the digital and industrial 4.0 era, the role of women is very prominent in developing the industries of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics/ STEM).
According to a study by the UNESCO and the Korean Women’s Development Institute in 2015, the number of women pursuing STEM in Indonesian universities has increased. The number of Indonesian female students who have graduated from the field of science has reached 52% and 30% of women has finally entered this field.
To further encourage the role of women in the field of technology, Tokopedia provides equal opportunities for all employees including female employees. At present, 41.3% of employees at Tokopedia are women. From the various divisions that exist, the following individuals are prominent women who has been entrusted to hold responsibility in developing technology, features, products and data analysis in Tokopedia.
Gabriella Kawilarang, Product Owner at Tokopedia
At a young age, Gabriella Kawilarang had an interest in the startup industry. To help her face the challenges that were present in the startup industry, Gabriella took a double degree in IT Management and Business at Babson College, US. According to Gabriella, “Business, technology and product design were the three fields that you need to be familiar with if you want to get involved in the startup industry.
After graduating from college, Gabriella was interested in joining Tokopedia because she was inspired by the company’s mission to support the digital economic equality in Indonesia. Furthermore, Gabriella believes that the startup business in Indonesia provides a great opportunity that needs to be explored and developed.
Gabriella Kawilarang, at the age of 26, is now a Product Owner in Tokopedia responsible for the “Top Up” and “Pembayaran” features. The products that she and her team developed includes “Kredit”, “Pajak”, “Donasi” to “pembayaran TV Kabel”. In every product development, Gabriella and her team continue their focus on creating new innovative products and solutions that will help make people’s lives more convenient and comfortable.
One of the most memorable products that Gabriella has developed is Gala Dana Palu (tokopedia.com/galadanapalu). Within two days, Gabriella and the team built a fund-raising service for the people of Palu and Donggala with dozens of payment channels that could speed up and simplify the donation process provided by users. Thanks to this service, Tokopedia managed to collect IDR 6 billion by more than 53,000 donors.
For women who want to explore the field of STEM, Gabriella believes that it takes a firm effort and willingness to learn. “I have estimated that the majority of students in my college major were men, but I’m surprised that the ratio can be up to 2:40. Entering a major where men dominates is culturally shocking! My advice is only one, if you are interested in learning IT, do not think about anything else. It may take around 1–2 weeks to adjust, but after this period, what really matters are the work ethic of your colleagues and not their gender.”
Enjelyna Pardede, Database Administrator at Tokopedia
Enjelyna Pardede (24) is a Database Administrator at Tokopedia. Graduating from the Institut Teknologi del, Medan, Enjelyna did not limit her focus to just engineering, instead she decided to expand her scientific field by working in the world of database systems and website servers.
“Perhaps there are some women who believe that men are more focus and faster in mastering science in the STEM field, but in reality, this is not the case. In my campus before, the majority of students was filled with women in engineering. Together we collaborated in creating ideas of various technological innovations,” Enjelyna said.
“Tokopedia is the first and most memorable company I have worked in,” said Enjelyna. In Tokopedia, Enjelyna is responsible for migrating various promo and product databases on the Tokopedia website. Once, Enjelyna was given the responsibility to migrate thousands of databases in just under six hours.
One of the biggest projects Enjelyna has ever held is “Ramadan Ekstra”. In 2018, this represented Tokopedia’s biggest promotional campaign. Enjelyna and her team were tasked with keeping the server strong when user traffic was very crowded and potentially down, but Enjelyna and her team managed to maintain the server when the “Ramadan Ekstra” promo took place. During that time, Tokopedia’s website was visited by 332 million users. At the end of the day, the transaction on May 25 2018 was equivalent to the first five-year cumulative transaction of Tokopedia.
This achievement gave Enjelyna the trust and recognition from her leaders and team. She was later entrusted to manage another big project in 2019. In addition, Enjelyna is also responsible for working with multiple divisions at Tokopedia, IT Support and IT Security to continue innovating in developing web servers in Tokopedia.
Miranti Rahmani, Business Intelligence at Tokopedia
One of the women who has been pursuing data and coding since early is Miranti Rahim (30), Business Intelligence at Tokopedia. This woman, who graduated from the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) majoring in Information Systems, is responsible for providing data for the development of various features and products in Tokopedia, working with Data Analyst, Finance and Business Development.
Before struggling with data, Miranti held the responsibility as the first team of the Android Developer Tokopedia Test Engineer team along with 9 other people. Only then, Miranti realized and intended to explore the Business Information System science by continuing her Masters studies at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. After that, Miranti rejoined Tokopedia as a Business Intelligence that explored data.
“I used to not being able to do coding, but my work in Tokopedia actually requires to code. From there I realized that I could find a way to learn by myself when working. We can transform something that we didn’t like before to a new challenge. What makes the data interesting is the hard skills and soft skills required, including understand the business and why users request certain types of data.” said Miranti.
One of the features that Miranti holds is the Airplane Ticket feature in Tokopedia. Miranti helps the team in providing data as tools for product reconciliation. Specifically as of 2018, Miranti is responsible for data on the development of “Tiket Pesawat” feature at Tokopedia from domestic to international flights.
Miranti explained that there were still many Indonesian women who had the passion and skills needed in the technology industry, but were not confident or still reluctant to enter the realm of technology. In fact, according to her, the most important thing is the strong willingness to contribute in the industry.
“If you want to study this field deeper, there are still many opportunities that can be explored. Don’t be afraid or be intimidated by a scientific field dominated by men. Being a woman or a woman wearing a veil is not a barrier at all. We will never know your capability if we don’t try. Just start first step.” said Miranti.
