William Tanuwijaya

Tanuwijaya was born in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra, Indonesia. He graduated from high school there, and his family was the middle income who supported his education. William went to college at BINUS University and later studied at the Harvard Kennedy School.

To pay for college, Tanuwijaya worked part-time. He worked in an internet cafe twelve hours a day up until his graduated in 2003. He then worked as a software developer in companies including Telkomsigma and Sqiva Sistem. He later worked as a game developer at Bolehnet. In 2006, Tanuwijaya worked as the IT and business development manager at Indocom Mediatama.

Tokopedia

In 2007, Tanuwijaya started to build Tokopedia, He asked his friend, Leontinus Alpha Edison, to join him as co-founder, an e-commerce startup that connects Indonesian buyers and sellers for free. At the same time his father was diagnosed with cancer.

On February 6, 2009, Tokopedia officially launched. At that year's Indonesia Celebration of Independence on August 17 Tokopedia opened for public access. In October 2014, Tokopedia received US$100 million from Softbank Internet and Media and Sequoia Capital. Tokopedia announced its next stage of investment on August 17, 2017 for $1.1 billion, from Alibaba Group.

Other activities

In 2016, Tanuwijaya represented Indonesia as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum. Tanuwijaya is one of the founders of Indonesia eCommerce Association (IdEA) and serves as a member of its supervisory board.