Nelly Nurmalasari
“One of my biggest learnings has been that there’s no one definition of what a successful leader looks like. I don’t need to be strong and no-nonsense, etc. to be a good leader. I can be caring and still get things done! I look up to many people as role models to invent my own leadership style.”
Company: Pintarnya
Founded: 2022
From a very young age Nelly, Pintarnya’s co-founder and CEO, was told to dream big and be independent by her factory-worker dad and school teacher mom in a small city in Banten Province in Indonesia. And that’s what she did.
When she was 15, determined to get the best possible high school education, she moved to a bigger city eight hours away from her parents, and lived all by herself!
In high school, she worked hard to be at the top of her class, which earned her a spot at ITB (the MIT of Indonesia) with a scholarship. She excelled at university and was one of only two students chosen by BCG from her batch for a consulting role. 4.5 years later, her exceptional performance at the firm resulted in a fully-sponsored MBA at Wharton, where her new-born and spouse joined her as she pursued the course. And, when she left BCG to join Traveloka, she became the Senior Vice President in 2020, heading multiple business units and leading a team of 600!
The desire to take more risks and solve bigger problems led her to startup in 2022.
“I met my co-founder Henry at Traveloka and around early 2021 he asked me, ‘So what’s next?’ After scaling teams and businesses catering to millions of consumers at Traveloka, my risk appetite had increased. I knew then that I wanted to startup, to become a founder. I also knew that I wanted to build something to solve a problem that impacts millions of people, I wanted to do something big.”
Throughout her career, Nelly felt that hiring as an industry was wrought with challenges. After many months of brainstorming with her co-founders, and connecting the dots from her own experience as an owner of a salon as well as her parents’ experiences as blue-collar workers, she realized that the real challenge in unlocking economic opportunities lies in solving for this segment. She launched Pintarnya along with her co-founders, Henry Hendrawan and Ghirish Pokardas.
Indonesia’s 60 million blue-collar workers make for more than 70% of paid workers and contribute to 20% of the country’s GDP. Yet, they lack access to organized, long term, reliable job opportunities and continue to be economically marginalized. To find jobs, they don’t have access to reliable channels or platforms that can provide verified information about jobs and employers. On the other hand, employers lack access to a reliable platform to help them quickly identify, verify, and hire.
To solve this problem, Pintarnya leverages a data-driven approach to connect job-seekers to opportunities through a simple app that uses the worker profiles to recommend and match them to relevant job opportunities. Pintarnya also works with employers to qualify and recruit suitable blue-collar workers.
“With Pintarnya, we have a very clear mission which is to enable Indonesia’s rising working class to get employed, become more employable and access better financial services.”
Nelly, her co-founders, Henry (formerly with Traveloka) and Ghirish (formerly with KKR) are all based in Jakarta Indonesia where Pintarnya is headquartered.