Indonesia’s nerdiest company joins Yello Mobile and Cloudera in multi-million dollar partnership

Mediatrac is easily Indonesia’s most nerdy company. For a party on its office rooftop, the executive team put painstaking efforts into hiring the right Darth Vader impersonator. “We had to go through at least three or four guys before we found the right one,” says Regi Wahyu, Mediatrac’s CEO. “The others were not tall enough.”

Beyond an endearing obsession with Star Wars paraphernalia, Mediatrac’s true specialization is in big data analytics – it helps massive companies collect, store, and make sense of their internal data. Mediatrac’s clients are Nestle, Kalbe, Indosat, Bank Mandiri, and the World Bank, to name a few.

Mediatrac also draws from its own treasure trove of data, unique to the Indonesian market, which it can mash up with client data. For instance, the firm says it has accumulated demographic and consumption-related data from over 60 million households across the nation, and holds an archive of media stats from newspapers, magazines, blogs, and social media.

Building international connections

The Star Wars-themed party was the backdrop for a company announcement. Mediatrac has recently forged two strategic partnerships. It will, from now on, work closely with Yello Digital Marketing (YDM), which is part of the South Korean Yello Mobile Group. The second partner is the Palo-Alto-based software company Cloudera, which specializes in big data software and support.

Specifically, YDM has an eye on Mediatrac’s data integration capabilities and tech, which can help the Korean company’s digital marketing companies in Southeast Asia gain a competitive edge. On the other side of the partnership, Mediatrac can leverage YDM’s affiliates in Southeast Asia to expand into new markets.

“We cannot disclose the details of the partnership at this time. However, it involves a multi-million dollar investment to obtain world-class talent, build infrastructure and to accelerate and strengthen both companies’ presences in the Indonesian and the Asian market” says Wahyu.

The partnership also means Mediatrac will become an important reselling partner for Cloudera. In return, Cloudera will equip Mediatrac with the tools and resources it needs to develop, and market Cloudera’s big data management software in Indonesia. Mediatrac and Cloudera also plan to set up a new big data center in the archipelago.

“All of Mediatrac’s data and intellectual property will continue to be owned by Indonesians, and remain in Indonesia,” adds Wahyu. He hints that there may be bigger joint ventures around the corner as Mediatrac and YDM grow closer together, but refrained from sharing details.

From left: Richard Jones of Cloudera, Mediatrac CEO Regi Wahyu, and David Lee of Yello Digital Marketing celebrating their partnership agreements.

“The outsiders, the failures”

Mediatrac can’t really be called a startup; the company has been around as a media monitoring agency since 2003. In 2010, it made a decisive pivot; to focus solely on big data analytics. The partnerships with Cloudera and YDM show Mediatrac has established itself as a key touchpoint for international companies interested in the local market.

Mediatrac also hosts the Big Data Week event in Jakarta, attracting the big names of the ecosystem to share knowledge with local entrepreneurs. It initiated Indonesia’s first hardware hackathon, and kickstarted a side project called CI-Agriculture. A team of analysts is exploring how weather data, and data from aerial surveillance, sensors, and field research, can be integrated to create financing and insurance products for Indonesia’s agricultural sector. Ci-Agriculture is still a part of Meditrac for now, but Wahyu sees potential for it to spin out as a separate business entity.

For Indonesia’s budding data scientists, software engineers, geeks, and general misfits, Mediatrac’s commitment to innovation is a blessing. The company’s current growth trajectory requires it to be on the lookout for talent. CTO Imron Zuhri  insists on an unorthodox recruitment method to grow the team: “Our human resources people go to universities and ask the professors: who are the outsiders, the failures, in your classes? Those are the people we like to hire,” explains Zuhri. According to him, these “black sheep” make great employees. “They want to learn everything, obsess over details, and are loyal once they feel they have found a place among equals.”