Who is Patrick Walujo, GoTo’s new CEO?
IN A surprise move, Andre Soelistyo is stepping down as chief executive officer of GoTo, just months after he outlined a strategy to steer the company towards profitability.
Now, all eyes are on Sugito Walujo – often known as Patrick Walujo – who is set to assume the position of chief executive at Indonesia’s biggest tech company, pending approval from shareholders.
Who is Patrick Walujo?
Walujo founded private equity firm Northstar Group in 2003. His firm was one of the earliest backers of ride-hailing giant Gojek. Gojek merged with e-commerce company Tokopedia to form GoTo in 2021.
Walujo sits on GoTo’s board of commissioners, which holds a supervisory role over the board of directors.
Before Northstar, he served stints at investment firm Pacific Century Group, and as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, based on his LinkedIn profile.
Northstar was also where outgoing CEO Soelistyo cut his teeth in tech investments. He was an executive director for seven years before becoming co-CEO of Gojek in 2019, following founder Nadiem Makarim’s departure to join politics.
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Why now?
Thursday’s (Jun 8) announcement marks GoTo’s second leadership shake-up since the start of the year.
In the February management reshuffle in which Walujo was appointed as commissioner, GoTo also made several changes to its leadership structure.
Notably, group president Patrick Cao left his post to run a company endowment fund, and Tokopedia co-founder William Tanuwijaya stepped down as the e-commerce platform’s CEO.
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New presidents were appointed for each of the group’s three business units in e-commerce, on-demand services and fintech. They report directly to Soelistyo.
Assembling the perfect leadership team has been a challenge, but the pressure is on for GoTo to find the right people who can steer the ship towards profitability – and to find them fast.
Even as the company narrows its net loss by 41 per cent year on year to 3.9 trillion rupiah (S$354.1 million) in Q1 2023, investors are growing impatient. GoTo’s share price has plummeted more than 65 per cent since it went public in April 2022, bringing its market cap down to 136.5 trillion rupiah.
With regional peer Sea posting its first two profitable quarters, the urgency for GoTo to turn profitable has only intensified.
What else is GoTo doing to meet its profitability targets?
Like its peers, GoTo has implemented aggressive cost-cutting measures, including cutting over 1,000 jobs.
Soelistyo in February brought forward its profitability target to Q4 2023, with plans to revamp its ride-hailing and e-commerce commission schemes, and to develop higher-margin services such as new fintech products.
The then CEO said the company won’t carry out further rounds of layoffs, but it is not ruling out the possibility of normal attrition as it assesses its cost structure.
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