Nadiem Makarim

The call-centre beginning of Gojek

Nadiem Makarim founded Gojek in 2010 as a call-centre service for motorcycle rides and courier work. Customers were connected to drivers by phone, before the company launched its app in 2015. That distinction matters: the idea and operating network preceded the mobile interface often treated as the company’s starting point. GoTo, Gojek’s successor group, describes the early service as an attempt to remove friction from everyday urban travel and delivery.

The app brought transport together with other on-demand services, eventually linking customers, drivers and merchants through a larger platform. GoTo’s own chronology helps establish when the service changed form, while its claims about economic impact and governance remain the company’s position rather than independent findings.

Sources for this section: [3] · [1]

Leaving the company for education policy

Nadiem left company leadership in 2019 to join President Joko Widodo’s cabinet as education and culture minister. GoTo says he resigned from its positions that October and delegated voting rights attached to his remaining shares; that is the company’s account of its separation from him, not a court finding about the later procurement case. His ministerial remit expanded in 2021 to include research and technology, and he served until the October 2024 cabinet handover.

His Merdeka Belajar programme pursued changes in assessment, curricula and higher education. The ministry replaced the old national examination with the National Assessment and, in February 2022, launched Kurikulum Merdeka and a teaching platform. Schools were offered different adoption options. These policy announcements establish what the ministry set out to do; they do not by themselves show how uniformly schools implemented the changes or whether learning outcomes improved.

Sources for this section: [1] · [4] · [6] · [5]

The Chromebook procurement case

The ministry’s procurement of Chromebooks and Chrome Device Management for school digitalisation became the subject of a corruption prosecution. In June 2026, a Jakarta anti-corruption court convicted Nadiem and imposed a ten-year prison sentence. The case concerned decisions made while he was minister, not the founding of Gojek. Nadiem disputed the accusations and appealed.

On 24 September 2026, the Jakarta High Court upheld a finding of guilt but reduced the prison term from ten to nine years. The Supreme Court’s news service reported the new term, a fine and a changed restitution order. The appeals judgment superseded the first-instance sentence but did not end the legal dispute.

After the appeals judgment, Nadiem told reporters that he would seek cassation before the Supreme Court and continued to deny that he received illicit funds, had a conflict of interest or caused state loss. His statements are his defence, not findings adopted by the appeals court. On 2 October, a prosecution spokesman also said prosecutors had declared an intention to seek cassation. The two sides therefore disputed different aspects of the judgment.

Sources for this section: [8] · [9] · [10]