Derianto Kusuma, chief technology officer and co-founder of Indonesian travel unicorn Traveloka, is leaving the company. Kusuma will be developing a new venture in a “non-competing category,” according to the company’s news release.
Both the company and Kusuma stated that his departure had been in the works for several months. In a Medium post, Kusuma alluded to the changing landscape of Southeast Asia’s tech scene as a reason behind his departure, while admitting that in the last two years, he had become “increasingly at odds” with company decisions:
However, starting a few years ago, the battle starts to show trends towards being more commercially-driven than innovation-driven, predatory than productive, perception-oriented than fundamentals-oriented. While one can argue it might be a necessary stage (debatable) in [Southeast] Asia tech landscape, I gradually realized that this game is no longer for me, and among other reasons, the consideration for an out-of-band exit becomes more appealing.
Kusuma started Traveloka with co-founders Ferry Unardi and Albert Zhang in 2012. Traveloka was most recently said to be raising US$400 million from new and existing investors, which could double its valuation to US$4.1 billion.
Update (Nov. 28, 12:03 pm): Added context and blog post excerpt.
Editing by Terence Lee and Eileen C. Ang
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