Andi S. Boediman, Chief Innovation Officer of Mojopia, the company
behind Indonesian ecommerce platform plasa.com, announced his official resignation Sunday night through a blog post. Boediman, along with former Mojopia CEO Shinta Dhanuwardoyo were hired by Telkom Indonesia in 2009 to revitalize the ailing plasa.com service.
Following Dhanuwardoyo’s resignation in December, it was a matter of time before Boediman part ways with the corporate giant and word of his impending resignation had spread almost immediately. Known as one of the country’s top creative entrepreneurs, he was, and currently still is the head of International Design School, a vocational institute focusing on the creative industry and entrepreneurship.
In our post about Dhanuwardoyo’s departure, we speculated that it was the clash of cultures that may have forced her, and now Boediman, to part ways with the Telkom company, and his blog post effectively confirmed that. Both executives are hardline entrepreneurs while Telkom is very set in its corporate ways. The languages used by both individuals in announcing their respective resignations strongly reflect that sentiment.
In his post, Boediman said, “it’s also a [relief] to get back to my entrepreneur life, which I have the freedom to have more personal time and [to] inspire others.”
During his time at Mojopia, he and Dhanuwardoyo managed to sign deals with Microsoft and eBay which he sees as being crucial to the future of plasa.com. The Telkom service began in the 90s as an email provider and a community platform, both of which have been overshadowed by the company’s drive to embrace ecommerce as its future.
By getting Microsoft on board, plasa’s email service now runs on the infrastructure of live.com which provides 25GB of online storage for both mail and other data through Microsoft’s SkyDrive service. eBay’s signing is considered a strategic move to provide plasa.com merchants a pathway to the international market.
The blog post explained the tasks that were given to both executives and the challenges that they faced. Telkom initially set a grand view for plasa.com as a “superportal” that offers a host of internet services but later settled with ecommerce as the initial platform to build. Unfortunately its journey to deliver ecommerce as a profitable platform in the short run would prove too challenging.
To make up for the shortcoming, Mojopia shifted its strategy to become a content provider and offer digital advertising services while it worked on its ecommerce platform. It signed a deal with Barclay’s Premiere League to become the official mobile partner in Indonesia although he admitted that it currently has, “yet to tap the big potential offered by this premium intellectual property rights.”
At the end of the day, while both former executives left some amicable and hopeful parting words, it is clear that there are strong divisions within the ranks as to the direction and management of the company. It would not be a surprise if we hear more changes within Mojopia and plasa.com in the coming months.
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