ALBERT SOERJONOTO

Albert Soerjonoto

Engineer and entrepreneur from Jakarta. JavaScript is unavailable, so the 160 public entries appear here as concise plain text: 151 Life entries followed by 9 additional project entries.

Life

1998 Born in Jakarta — Firstborn of Boediarto Soerjonoto and Anne Marie Harjati; raised in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta. Maternal line traces to Yogyakarta's royal court; paternal line is Hokkien merchant stock.
2002 First Bionicle, age four — A gift from my uncle begins the annual ritual: my mother returns from work trips with the newest sets. Not play but construction — 'testing what fits, what breaks.' Kindergarten at TK Kejora.
2004 'Beginning of Science' at Science Centre Singapore — A visit I later log, in my own 2019 life timeline, as the first waypoint of my scientific life.
2004 Elementary school and the swing pattern — SD Don Bosco II, Pulomas (2004–2010). Grade 1: fear-driven study, second in class. Grades 3–4: a withdrawn spell, falling grades. Then recovery. The lifelong pattern I later name: drift and obsession — 'when the big test came, I showed up.'
2007 ASIMO in Tokyo — On my mother's work tour, age nine, I watch Honda's ASIMO walk onstage — and ask the question I keep for life: 'Why is he trying to walk like us? They could have given him wheels.'
2008 After-school robotics course — LEGO Mindstorms NXT at the Robotics Education Centre near home: robots that summon, golf, and escape mazes. NXT-G, the kit's visual programming tool, made behavior visual: snap Move, Wait, Switch, and Loop blocks onto a sequence beam; set motor ports, power, rotations, and sensor thresholds; download over USB to the NXT brick; then run, observe, and tune the physical robot.
2009 Jakarta Junior Robotic Competition: third place, GolfBot — My NXT robot is the fastest in the field and my program the first to work; a teammate places it a few degrees off in the final run. The certificate — the official record — reads '3th Winner.'
2010 “I want to be a leader” — At my Canisius admission interview, I remember being asked why I wanted to study there. Usually quiet, I answered, 'I want to be a leader' — an unrehearsed reply that surprised my parents and me.
2010 Service before titles: three sports-week crews — POR CC catering crew in 2010, equipment crew in 2011, and publications crew in 2012—three consecutive committees before a formal coordinator title.
2010 Bantar Gebang landfill visit — A school visit to Jakarta's landfill mountain at Bantar Gebang, at twelve. I kept no notes from the day; a wastewater paper follows three years later, clean-energy infrastructure thirteen years after that.
2011 · Sep-Oct Visual Basic at thirteen — 'Kota-Kota,' a city-information listbox app at thirteen — my later README: 'my only project in Visual Basic that I am able to recover.' Pascal, Flash, and hand-built web pages follow.
2011 · 15-19 Oct Farm live-in: 'not enough merely to care' — Homestay with a farming family in Sumber Village, Magelang. At thirteen I write that I had been living comfortably 'while they live by struggle' — and conclude that I must act, not just care.
2011 Value-chain interviews at thirteen — Interviews a furniture maker and a domestic worker, concluding village producers do the heavy work while city intermediaries capture the margin: 'this is the injustice that occurs in our country.'
2012 · 20 Jan Public-housing fieldwork: claims versus reality — With three classmates, interviews residents, neighborhood leaders, and the building manager at Rusun Kemayoran, then writes that officials’ claims did not match observed conditions.
2012 SOPA article: defending the open internet at 13 — A school journalism piece explaining the proposed US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), payment cutoffs, and delisting risks — an eighth-grader in Jakarta arguing for the open internet.
2012 CaniMass Editor — Edits the school mass-media outlet (2012–13), publishes under byline '(ALB),' drafts the coverage proposal for the school's 85th anniversary, and keeps the yearbook committee's master data.
2012 · Nov Anti-poverty policy critique at fourteen — A ~20-page religion-class critique asking 'but do these policies truly bring change to society?' — with a sequel at fifteen arguing poverty persists 'because of imprecise strategy.'
2012 Hand-coded culture website and Flash work — A multi-page HTML/CSS site on Indonesian traditions, Flash animation, SQL practice, and a LabVIEW volume controller. The wider folder holds hundreds of files, most generated or dependencies — not hundreds of hand-written pages.
2013 The C++ ladder — Payroll calculator, quadratic solver, and leap-year checker at fifteen, alongside later C++ drills and notes.
2013 Arduino obstacle avoider — An obstacle-avoiding robot whose code header credits the published sketch it adapts — to which I added an ultrasonic sensor myself. Ubuntu and ROS — the Robot Operating System framework — self-taught in high school.
2013 The janitor moment — I step over a floor a cleaner is mopping, without acknowledgment. The incident ends here as a failure of attention; the reflection that gives it meaning comes two years later.
2013 · 11 Sep The committee I missed — then returned to — In a homeroom reflection written at the time, I admit missing Education Fair after failing to follow up: 'I often postpone problems.' A September 2014 school essay records the return, with drawing-competition committee duties.
2013 · 8-9 Nov First place, Java–Sumatra scientific-paper competition — A two-student household-wastewater study wins Juara I — first place — at Universitas Sanata Dharma. I joined an existing team, then committed fully to the work.
2014 The Japan dream gets paperwork, then yields — The complete application kit and past exam papers for Monbukagakusho, the Japanese government scholarship, are still in my files. I prepared the Japan route seriously, then set it aside when family circumstances changed.
2014 · Jun Kemah Peduli: building a village vertical garden — Community-service camp near Gunung Gede: 'village-building work, which looks easy, is actually hard and demands great thought and above all physical strength.'
2014 · 3 Aug 'PLANS FOR UNIVERSITY': a weighted decision matrix — At sixteen I build a pros-and-cons matrix across engineering majors and universities, deliberately weighing unpopular fields: mechatronics is 'growing fast, few people want it.'
2014 Michael is coming; the bet is placed — News of my mother's pregnancy reframes everything: 'suddenly, it wasn't just about me anymore.' The unannounced decision: my education will not cost my parents their second son's future — full scholarship abroad, or stay home.
2014 · 9 Sep Skepticism gives way to advocacy — Doubts a retreat's usefulness, changes his mind after attending, then writes that students' complaints should genuinely reach teachers and the foundation.
2014 · 18 Oct An early third-party character note — A motivation-training instructor's written remark: 'Albert displays a warm and kind personality... He also dares to do the challenge given to him.'
2015 · Jan CASANOVA: Poster Design Committee Coordinator — Coordinates the poster-design competition within an eighteen-team inter-school festival. The bilingual rules, work plan, budget, judging system, and fairness clause for committee errors are still in my files.
2015 · Feb-Mar Informatics olympiad: regional eighth, provincial top 40 — Places eighth in the Central Jakarta selection and reaches the provincial top 40, but does not advance.
2015 · 30 Apr Michael is born — Michael is born.
2015 · 11 May Writes the Canisius-wide examen — Authors 'Menyadari Keputusan' and delivers the Ignatian examination of conscience over the PA system to the whole school: 'Have I been responsible in every action and decision I make?'
2015 Near the bottom—then the preparation year — A scholarship-preparation diagnostic places me near the bottom, and an instructor tells my mother I am unfocused. I give up games, social media, and television for the preparation year and work through past papers until the result changes.
2015 · 29 Jul First Aid service—and the later janitor reflection — I carry injured juniors during orientation week; days later, I write down the earlier janitor lapse: “even in busyness we must notice and be sensitive to the people around us.”
2015 'Feeding the Earth, Energy for Life' — World School Forum essay: 'we are eating our own life support systems by draining earth' — my earliest climate writing. I also record failing the forum's final selection.
2015 · Oct Designs the Temu Kolese logo — then critiques the event — Serves on the visual committee of the all-Jesuit-schools gathering and writes its logo philosophy; my official reflection then faults the event for symbolism without real environmental action.
2015 Bal-E: recycled-can battery proposal — Team Canitech proposes an aluminium-ion cell using processed can waste, paired with bicycle-dynamo charging, on a budget of Rp 83,000 (about US$6). The concept advances to the EUREKA competition at ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung).
2015 Altar service and tutoring — Completes altar-server training at St. Raphael; tutors classmates in chemistry by counselor appointment and church children in mathematics, 'by breaking down a complex problem into smaller parts.'
Oct 2014 Second farm live-in, Ngablak — A second homestay with a farming family in Ngablak, Magelang — returning to field observation three years after the Sumber live-in.
2015 · 31 Oct The question carried forward — In a university essay dated 31 October 2015, I ask: 'What good will it bring if I don't use what I gain for society?' — alongside 'I want to build a company that works in research of technology for my country.'
2016 · Jan The application war-room — Self-written checklists in Indonesian; formal applications for the Nanyang and CN Yang scholarships; handwritten past-paper calculus on cheap paper. Prepared many doors; bet on one.
2016 · 31 Jan-14 Feb CC MART: team PHP/MySQL school-store application — A five-person class project builds a PHP/MySQL application for the school store during my final term.
2016 · 7 Mar NTU admission—the bet resolves — NTU admits me on 7 March 2016 — to my memory, the only university application I submitted. I had prepared other international routes, but I have no record that I ever submitted those applications.
2016 Interview freeze—then the ASEAN Undergraduate Scholarship — As I remember it, I explain my robotics ambition, then freeze when asked which diseases robots should treat. NTU subsequently awards the ASEAN Undergraduate Scholarship; the award is on paper, the interview dialogue is memory.
2016 · Apr-May A scholarship story becomes an Antiokhia dialogue — At eighteen, a co-presenter and I turn my three-year scholarship pursuit into an Indonesian talk-show-style dialogue for younger retreat participants. Our script moves from ambition and repeated setbacks to preparation, trust, and service; in the rehearsal recording, both of us test the story with handmade visual props.
2016 · Jun Graduates Canisius College — Graduates from Canisius College. The chapter closes without a coronation; what carries forward is a method: reflect, investigate, build, communicate, and serve. Yearbook farewell: 'we'll always be brothers!'
2016 · Aug Enters NTU on the ASEAN Undergraduate Scholarship — Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Accelerated Bachelor programme. Exam seasons run on the six-meal-box routine with my roommate — six boxed meals bought at dawn so neither of us has to leave the room. NTU 'felt like the Olympics of intellect.'
2017 · 24 Jan Exchange assignment: University of Maryland — I had wanted Wisconsin and cried at the assignment — later calling it 'one of the best twists of my life.' My Year-1 essay already plans US postgraduate study: 'I think of robots as toys and programming as languages.'
2017 PINTU Yearbook Director as a freshman — I lead 8 committee members through 21 photoshoots of 108 graduating seniors; sales grow from under ten copies to 80, sold out; I begin the association's student database. 'A contribution for my home country.'
2017 · 29 May-3 Jun ICRA: volunteering for DJI opens the next frontier — At IEEE ICRA 2017 in Singapore — the field's flagship robotics conference — I volunteer at DJI's booth and stay after my assigned shift. The same DJI team is involved when the route continues to RoboMaster and Shenzhen; nuTonomy also first encounters me at the conference.
2017 RoboMaster: from Singapore to Shenzhen — Joins NTU’s Mecatron team late and as its youngest member for DJI’s RoboMaster competition in Shenzhen. Working inside an established robot and team becomes an apprenticeship in software, hardware, field constraints, and rapid iteration.
2017 Promoted to field engineer mid-tournament — When the software lead flies home, I become one of seven field engineers — re-deriving dodging from momentum physics, re-cutting the chassis, adding rule-legal decoys. Team credit in the code carries my nickname 'Asur.'
2017 RoboMaster software: the dodgenshoot node — For the team's autonomous self-defense robot: passive and active dodging under uncertainty, feedback-controlled (PID) turret centering that continuously corrects aim onto enemy armor, and timed shooting bursts — tested in the Stage and Gazebo robot simulators, run on laser-rangefinder (LIDAR) input.
2017 Shenzhen beyond the arena — DJI brings the international teams through DJI, ZTE, and Tencent. At dinner, students from the University of Washington introduce me to Elon Musk's work in electric vehicles and rockets.
2017 · 5 Aug URECA undergraduate research: deep learning — A research year — 'Building Android App Profiles using Deep Learning' — my first sustained machine-learning work, run across two continents through the exchange.
2017 · Sep Wheelchair project: interviewing the one person no one consulted — Told a stroke patient's wheelchair needed machine learning and robot vision, I am skeptical, visit the patient's home, and interview the wife: 'we already have the owner of the best vision and planning algorithm — a human brain.'
2018 · 7 Jan The wheelchair is delivered — Motorized with a retrofitted motor and battery, with speed governed to 50% for the user's safety — the first university project in which I engineer for one person rather than a grade.
2018 · Spring Maryland exchange: leading freshmen as a visitor — In the keystone engineering course I serve as Electrical Team Leader of a fire-fighting over-sand rover — the team's from-scratch schematic, an Arduino fire-detection algorithm, and a two-night redesign of my own when the first sensor approach fails.
2018 Learning to tell the story, then taking the stage — At Maryland I deliberately treat public speaking as a skill to build. I rewrite an autobiographical robotics narrative, turn Jakarta floods and my rural Live-In experience into an eight-minute climate-action address, and perform a team-and-resilience monologue. My midterm self-evaluation names growth in storytelling, vocal technique, and memorization while candidly naming articulation and missed deadlines as unfinished work.
2018 · 28 Aug An unprompted endorsement — My future final-year-project supervisor endorses me, unasked, to a leading US automotive-research consortium — faculty vouching for a third-year student a year before the supervision begins.
2018 · 10 Nov The energy conviction, hand-summarized — From my reading notes, copying down Bill Gates's argument: 'if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of, to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy.'
2019 · Mar Pressure makes progress: an EV policy theory — From my Toyota research: 'technological progress happens mostly because of pressure.' Regulations enforce, incentives price — an analysis of EV policy history I write for myself at twenty-one.
2019 · 7 Oct Proposing my own thesis question — Rather than accept the assigned eavesdropping project, I propose in writing a deep-learning outdoor-sound classification system for drone (UAV) security applications and draft the new abstract myself.
2019 · Nov Retina segmentation: iterate, diagnose, improve — A course project iterates 81.3% to 87.6% accuracy by diagnosing what was failing and redesigning the method — a lab diary of a report.
2019 Microfinance concept for rural Indonesia — A course concept on decentralized microfinancing, researched down to regulator level — a fintech-for-Indonesia thesis one year before Oyika.
2019 Google rounds passed — and walked away — Passes several interview rounds, then stops pursuing the process — no offer in hand — to keep betting on the door I wanted.
2020 · 25 Jan Giving the story back — Publishes the Tesla story on Indonesia Mengglobal — the mentoring platform for Indonesian students — so the path I found could be found by others.
2020 · Jan Mentoring incoming exchange students — Runs the GEM Club buddy briefing for new exchange students together with a faculty member — the door I walked through, held open.
2020 · Apr The take-home, completed anyway — Solves the reliability challenge on twelve Arizona battery-storage-site datasets, validating the thermal model against public weather data — and teaches myself Weibull life-data analysis for a role that never opened.
2020 · 8-14 May Final-year project lands — Two-stage deep-learning sound classifier; 86 tuning sessions; preprocessing rebuilt to run at a thousandth of the load time; code handed into NTU's collaboration with ST Engineering. His written close: 'I am humbled by this project.'
2020 · Jun Graduates NTU: Honours (Highest Distinction) — BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering on the full scholarship, accelerated programme. One F in four years — a one-credit careers module, the year Tesla flew me in from Asia — kept in every retelling.
2018 · May Silicon Valley: the first Tesla attempt — After hundreds of US applications by my own count, supported by Maryland's career, résumé, and interview coaching teams, I fly west and visit technology campuses including Facebook and Google. I take an Uber to Tesla headquarters, reach the public lobby, spend an hour gathering courage, and offer my résumé at the front desk; security asks me to leave. I continue to Fremont and cold-message Tesla engineers on LinkedIn. One responds, welcomes me, and advises me to build more industry experience — reinforcing the path through Accenture, nuTonomy, and Toyota before my final Tesla application.
2018 · Jun-Aug Accenture: the tester who automated the testing — Hired as a tester on a telecom project, I automate the work and become developer of the internal verification tool (v10 to v21), adopted by other teams; my manager's letter cites the voluntary effort.
2018 · Aug-Dec nuTonomy: embedded intern on a robotaxi fleet — Joins the MIT self-driving spin-off that launched the world's first public robotaxi trial. Ten projects across the autonomy stack; picks up work items assigned to full-time engineers; documentation I wrote was reused by engineers in Pittsburgh.
2018 The hand-built CAN bench — Builds an eight-port test bench for CAN — the Controller Area Network wiring vehicles use to pass messages between controllers — with correct 120-ohm electrical termination at each end and record-and-replay tooling (SocketCAN), including a small script that restarts playback when an interface comes up.
2018 The takeover-detection redesign — Rebuilds the fleet's takeover comparison so each check runs in constant time instead of a search that grows with the data — from binary search (O(log N)) to a hash-table design (O(1)); detection response improves from ~0.5 s to ~0.1 s with zero failures in three road tests.
2018 The network mistake I keep telling — My router configuration slows the whole office network for an hour. The written lesson, kept ever since: 'Always think: what's the worst case that could happen here?'
2018 The video rebroadcaster — Reverse-engineers a video tool's network protocol (UDP), fixes concurrency and byte-order faults, isolates its traffic onto two separate networks (VLANs), and packages redeployment in Docker — the fix-it-properly sequel to the router mistake.
2018 · Dec-Jan Toyota Astra internship: EV research before the policy wave — Forecasts engine-oil sales and researches the future business of electric vehicles for Indonesia. The deputy division head's letter: 'very confidence and proud … to anywhere he wishes to go.'
2019 · 17 Jan The cold email that works — I write to a Tesla recruiter; the reply comes within a day. Behind it: 300+ applications toward the US frontier over three years by my own count, ~30 to Tesla. Tesla's dropdown had no NTU entry — I created it.
2019 · Feb The Tesla cover letter's thesis, six years early — Three robotics competitions, ten-plus projects, wastewater filters 'for my sinking hometown, Jakarta' — and the line: 'I really want to help solve this problem by carrying the mission to other parts of the world.'
2019 · 5 Apr Tesla offer signed — flown in from Asia — Signs the offer to join Tesla’s Field Reliability team as a Data Analyst Intern. It closes the loop opened by the unsuccessful Maryland-era walk-in.
2019 · May-Aug Tesla: analytics by day, factory floor on weekends — Builds Python packages for parts-lifetime analysis and fleet performance metrics (KPIs) across Model S/3/X, a Flask web reporting app, and dashboards for five teams — and volunteers weekends on the factory floor during the record quarter push.
2020 · Jun Joins Oyika as founding staff—and helps kickstart it remotely — Hired by the Group CEO during the COVID collapse, I work from Singapore as founding staff on the early battery-swap operations. Cambodia becomes the first focus and test bed.
2020 Cambodia, the first focus and test bed: Phnom Penh ride telemetry — Builds daily and weekly ridership analytics for the Cambodia fleet. Separately, I make the market's advertisements in Khmer through four iterations — Khmer for the ads; the analytics run in English.
2020 · Dec Morning error logs: production scar tissue — Debugs swap-cabinet errors from daily CSV logs — the unglamorous operational education behind the later standards work.
2021 · Nov Honest accounting, on the record — Before impact numbers go to a program funder, I interrogate my own data — 'does deployment include bikes that are broken right now?' — and report the unflattering categories explicitly: Broken, Lost, Unknown.
2021 Dashboards for Cambodia and Indonesia — As a founding-staff data analyst and software engineer, I co-direct a 15-plus-person team building operations dashboards and a command center for more than 100 swap stations in Indonesia and more than 30 in Cambodia.
2022 Moves to Indonesia: analytics becomes operations — The Group CEO sends me home. Remote analytics becomes direct responsibility for bikes, batteries, stations, riders, suppliers, and field teams.
2022 The rider arithmetic — A delivery rider pays about US$38 a month for battery, swaps, and energy, against $50–70 for subsidized petrol — collected daily, because riders live day to day. The arithmetic was worked out in the operations years, and the later chapters still run on it.
2022 · 9 Mar The bricked-battery incident — A fleet-scale hardware failure in the third battery batch, worked through in a written post-mortem.
2022 · Jun Interoperability DNA: 583 bikes, 12 brands — A partnership proposal documents 583 motorcycles integrated across 12 brands and 18 models — the interoperability record that precedes the standards work.
2022 · 14 Jun Riders as the company's own storytellers — Films a testimonial with a female ride-hailing driver — the people the infrastructure serves, telling it themselves.
2023 · 1 Feb Standards runway begins — Maps Oyika's own battery against the emerging national requirements for type-L vehicles (two- and three-wheelers) in a compliance checklist — the technical homework before the standards year.
2023 · Jul Appointed President Director: legally accountable for the entity — Appointed President Director of PT Oyika Energi Indonesia in July 2023. A late-June office handover — remarks to the team, a handshake with predecessor Carl Wong, and a team portrait — makes the transition visible before the early-July public announcement. The role expands my legal and operating accountability for the Indonesian entity, its team, assets, partners, and riders.
2023 · 9 Sep Earlier commercial context: Malaysia launches — Oyika’s battery-swap system launches in Malaysia through the rydeEV Experience Centre. This commercial launch predates SNI 8928:2023 and is context for—not a result of—the later standards work.
2023 · 13 Sep The state asks a startup for the blueprint — PLN — Indonesia's state electricity utility — formally asks Oyika, 'as a company experienced in operating swap stations,' to contribute the technical study for national battery-swap standardization. Context: a national roadmap of 2.45 million electric two-wheelers by 2030, from about 30,000 registered at the time.
2023 · Sep-Nov Chairing the technical rounds — Chairs the rounds convened after the request—Honda and the Japanese manufacturers’ association, Hyundai and the Korean association, the state battery corporation, and direct competitors at one table.
2023 “I walked in wanting our connector to win” — The technical study argues me out of that position. My conclusion: public infrastructure should not adopt one company's proprietary standard; it should use open interfaces where every player can participate.
2023 · 3 Nov Oyika contributes its connector designs royalty-free — Oyika declares its registered plug and socket designs available to the national standard without royalties. I sign the five-party accord for the company alongside the state battery corporation and three competitors.
2023 · 12 Dec SNI 8928:2023 is established — Indonesia establishes a national battery-swap standard with openly licensed (royalty-free) connector designs, 60 V and 72 V battery classes, and a common CAN-bus communication protocol between battery and station. The urgent standard-formulation track (PNPS) — from its 18 October listing to the 12 December standard — runs in under two months.
2023 · Dec The public record catches up — After the appointment, articles begin quoting me directly: battery performance and Indonesian nickel, interoperability through collaboration, rider affordability, Battery-as-a-Service, and the climate purpose behind the work. What follows keeps my own interviews and quoted remarks separate from Oyika's press releases and their syndicated copies.
2024 · 2 May-15 Jul PLN partnership workstreams — Proposal, live interoperability demo, an executed five-year cooperation agreement with the state utility, and follow-on negotiation minutes. The signed cooperation agreement (PKS, Perjanjian Kerja Sama) names me as Oyika President Director and divides the system between PLN's cabinets/sites/power/platform and Oyika's batteries/registration/rider operations; the later minutes name 'Pak Albert' leading the Oyika delegation and setting follow-on schedules.
2024 · 17 May Live interoperability demo — Oyika connectors and batteries running in the state utility's cabinets through partner APIs — the standard demonstrated as working hardware, not paperwork.
2024 · 17 May Earlier commercial context: Thailand opens — The Thailand market opens with a branded station and fleet demonstration in Bangkok. The commercial launch is distinct from the separately reported standards participation.
2024 · 27 May Gojek partnership signed — A cooperation agreement with the ride-hailing super-app: e-motorbike rental integrated into its ecosystem, with rider installments collected through daily earnings — a finance rail for riders outside formal credit.
2024 · Jul Hire, empower, delegate — Writes the job description for a Head of Strategic Projects; eight months later the hire is executing in a signed partner contract. Increasingly I send named lieutenants into rooms I once worked alone.
2024 · 26 Jul Requests a seat at SAE’s international standards table — Applies to join SAE International’s Micromobility Battery Standards Committee as a producer-class voting member, seeking to carry Indonesia’s experience into an international forum.
2024 · 4 Aug Batam: the national-standard connector enters domestic production — At a Batam factory opening on 4 August 2024, the connector specified by SNI 8928:2023 enters domestic manufacture. President-elect Prabowo Subianto spoke with and encouraged me at the event — recorded in Oyika's public post.
2024 · 31 Oct Four videos teaching the plan — I record myself teaching the 2025 plan to the organization — general overview, marketing, operations and after-sales, consumer strategy.
2024 · Q4 Inbound partner demand — After weekly work with financing and battery partners, a global battery maker sends Oyika its own joint-venture proposal without being asked.
2024 · 17 Dec Partnership with one of the world's largest motorcycle makers — After months of due diligence, a signed agreement adapts the maker's electric scooter to Oyika batteries and stations under a 'Powered by Oyika' mark — the contract text naming me as President Director.
2025 · 20 Feb 'EVs Powered by Oyika' scales up — An expanded rental program with Alessa, the Indonesian EV supplier behind 'EVs Powered by Oyika' since its July 2024 master agreement: vehicles, insurance, and warranty from Alessa; app, unlimited swaps, and rider management from Oyika.
2025 · 22 Mar The zero-upfront-capital structure — TDL, the financing partner, procures the EVs, batteries, and chargers and rents them to Oyika — partner capital, Oyika operations, with rent-to-own conversion built in. Fleet, batteries, network, and collections now run on partner balance sheets.
2025 · Mar-Apr Oyika operates PLN’s interoperable cabinets — PLN approves Oyika to operate dozens of the utility’s interoperable swap cabinets—the shared institutional work moving from demonstration into field operations.
2025 · Apr Breaking fast with the riders — The Ramadan buka puasa with ride-hailing riders, my own selfie in the update — proximity to the people whose daily arithmetic the infrastructure serves.
2025 · Apr-Jun Candor in the monthly updates — 'Integration took longer than expected... demand has been lower across the board, so we're ramping up marketing.' Rider complaints about station distribution drive the infrastructure roadmap.
2025 · May Brazil: testing whether the model travels — During ScaleUp inBrazil, a 27-day government-backed Singapore–Brazil scale-up immersion in May 2025, I study Latin American competitors across São Paulo, Curitiba, Florianópolis, and Rio. I present Oyika's Southeast Asian battery-swapping experience at Japan House São Paulo, then present in Portuguese on the Curitiba Demoday stage. A study mission, not a market launch.
2025 · 9-10 Jul A 3.3 kW charging-station specification under my signature — Signs a quotation specifying a 3.3 kW charging station on the national-standard connector for a government charging-station program.
2025 · 14 Jul The lesson in ink — Ten days after drafting fixed-obligation partner terms, I rewrite my own standard rental clause to refuse guaranteed minimums — correcting my own exposure to the same structure.
2025 · 9 Aug The Vietnam analysis, self-built — A 75-million-motorcycle market teardown: petrol-ban timelines, competitor battery-as-a-service pricing to the dong, and target cities — strategy work by my own hand.
2025 · Sep Twenty stations for two provincial governments — A government charging-station program procures 20 two-wheeler charging stations I specified for the Jakarta and West Java governments — anchored on the open national-standard connector.
2025 · 14 Oct The shock — A migration to the new-generation swap system disrupts payments and swaps; battery thefts follow across eleven station sites. Police reports are filed; a suspect is identified; the crisis quarter begins.
2025 · 14 Nov Asset recovery mid-crisis — Negotiates the buyback of 27 swap stations from a partner — recovery of hard assets while the storm is still overhead.
2025 · 28 Nov Reading next-generation pack specifications in Chinese — Studies next-generation LMFP (lithium manganese iron phosphate) battery-pack specifications in the original Chinese for future sourcing, during the crisis quarter.
2025 · 2 Dec The reconciliation letter — Writes to the financing partner's chief executive naming the shortfall plainly, offering to absorb a share 'purely in the spirit of partnership,' and requesting system access — transparency, shared pain, and a systems ask in one letter.
2026 · Jan Rent-to-own financing relaunches — After a staged trial of new electric motorcycles, a financing partner launches rent-to-own financing — the fleet model rebuilt on more resilient terms.
2026 · Jan-Feb Crisis re-architecture — Battery positions transferred, written answers given plainly, and a triparty agreement engineered with burned-once protections: payments executed only back-to-back, after written confirmation. 'Nothing in this letter constitutes a waiver.'
2026 · Mar-Jul The personal AI-builder sprint — Nights and weekends: an Indonesian-food AI tracker built with 232 commits in a month, and a hobby app whose rate limiter learns an API's hidden limits while cutting database cost roughly 30-fold.
2026 · May The downsizing, reported plainly — 'We reduced headcount from 70 staffs to half that number' — my own words in the update. Servicing consolidated in-house; remaining marketing redeployed onto AI-assisted tooling.
2026 · Jun Rider feedback changes the interoperability program — Riders keep choosing Oyika's own stations and costs must fall, so the flagship utility interoperability program changes.
2026 · 20-22 Jun Three complete apps in three days — While rebuilding the company, I build three complete side applications in three days with AI assistance — separate from the platform rebuild running in the same window — including tooling whose own risk register guards against 'authorship drift from AI use.'
2026 · 20 Jun-2 Jul The thirteen-day production rebuild — With vendor software now dead weight, I use Claude Code and OpenAI Codex sessions under a written working agreement to direct and review an agent-assisted replacement: 36,541 lines of TypeScript, 226 commits, 30 migrations, and 16 test suites — live in production on day thirteen.
2026 Payment and custody controls — Server-computed amounts, SHA512 webhook signature verification, idempotent events, default-deny row-level security on every table, audited manual overrides — and a fleet import of 1,161 motorcycles and 3,097 batteries.
2026 · 10 Jul The fixes keep landing — Pull requests continue past launch — including the database-pagination fix that eliminated phantom arrears — maintaining what I built.
2026 “That was my decision, and others carried it” — 'I had built our growth on a single partner. That was my decision, and thirty-five employees and a thousand riders carried it.'
2026 AI assists the front line — Separately from the transactional rebuild, active n8n customer-support and sales automations use OpenAI models and embeddings. A 23 July 2026 backup records GPT-5.1 and GPT-4o-mini in support, GPT-5 mini in booking, and OpenAI embeddings across retrieval; forecasting, battery-health anomalies, and rebalancing remain in progress.
2026 The riders become owners — Oyika reports that the first riders complete their rent-to-own terms and receive their motorcycles. Their daily cost falls to battery service, while ownership creates resale value and an incentive to maintain the asset.
2026 Company outcomes as of July 2026 — Oyika reports more than 1.3 million battery swaps, 37 million kilometres ridden, about 2,700 tonnes of CO₂ avoided, more than 1,000 electric two-wheelers, 250 swap stations, and over US$10 million in asset financing closed.
2021 Indonesia becomes Oyika’s second launched country — Following Cambodia, Oyika is operating in Indonesia — the second country in the launch sequence as I recall it; I haven't yet found the exact launch date or announcement.
2024 · 1 Aug Presents Indonesia’s standardization process to Malaysia — Presents remotely to Swappable Battery System Consortium Meeting 2/2024, convened by NanoMalaysia and MASAAM, Malaysia's motorcycle and scooter assemblers' association. My seven-slide deck shares Indonesia's technical-study and consensus-building experience with Malaysian assemblers and consortium members.
2024 · 6 Nov Malaysia introduces voluntary SBS specifications — At its third meeting, the Malaysian consortium introduces voluntary specifications for battery dimensions, voltage, weight, connectors, and data communication. Indonesia’s experience was one input shared with the group — not the cause — and the specifications are voluntary, not a gazetted Malaysian national standard.
2024 · Mar Oyika reports participation in Thailand’s standards effort — A March 2024 Oyika company deck states that the company participated in national-standardization committees in Malaysia and Thailand. Thailand's consortium existed, but nothing I've found ties me personally to it, and it did not produce a Thai national standard.
2021 · 27 Jul & 2 Aug Two cabinet failures, one coordinated response — When riders could not complete swaps at two Tangerang cabinets, field responders Agung and Agus went on site while I changed affected door and cabinet states in the backend database. The incidents were closed the same day; the second postmortem also called for an abnormal-state alarm because the failure had not appeared in the operating system.
2024 · 23 Feb The Indonesia team brings its support request to HQ — Firman, Agung, Filemon, and I travel to Singapore to present Indonesia's technical-support request to headquarters. Photographs place me with Oyika colleagues in the office and across the team's evening together — a cross-border operating relationship, not a solo intervention.
2025 · 20 Aug 441 riders surveyed before moving the workshop — A second Oyika–Gojek rider survey records 441 responses before the team’s next service decisions. Among 152 riders who answered the workshop-location question, Serpong was requested most often; the same study records accident-related lost work and the practical reasons riders chose Oyika, including battery availability, rental price, and free servicing.
2022 · 13–14 Nov At B20 Bali, finding a place in Indonesia — Eight months before the President Director appointment, I attend the B20 Summit — the business forum of the G20 — in Bali during Indonesia's G20 presidency. Photographs from the two days show me entering the summit, listening in the plenary hall, meeting attendees, and trying the event stage after sessions.
2022 · 20 Nov–18 Dec EV Funday: helmet on, inside the public campaign — After B20 Bali, I join Jakarta's four-week Electric Vehicle Funday campaign. At the 20 November launch, photographs show me in an Oyika shirt beneath the event arch and helmeted astride an Oyika motorcycle. I return with the Oyika team for the 18 December Monas-to-GBK finale — where public officials, riders, industry peers, and entertainers made electric mobility visible together.
2023 · 24 Nov Riau: conversion meets the battery-swap system — At the Riau Complex of RAPP (Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper) in Pangkalan Kerinci, I am present as the company and Indonesia's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (Kementerian ESDM) launch an employee motorcycle-conversion program supported by battery swapping. The press frame places me with the delegation; the program carries the EV transition into a workforce community in Sumatra.
2025 · 10 Sep–10 Dec Yamaha Neo's × Grab: riders test the swap system — Across a three-month field trial, Grab riders put Yamaha Neo's motorcycles and Oyika-built battery swapping into daily use. I appear with the rider cohort at the Grab Electric pool; Yamaha personnel test the cabinets, dealers train riders, and the Oyika team iterates from what happens in the field.

Additional projects

2018 · Spring ENES100 Arduino fire-detection rover — Leads Team FIRENDS' electrical work and writes Arduino flame-sensing and motor-control experiments for an over-sand firefighting rover, alongside the team's from-scratch schematic and final common-ground repair.
2018 · Aug-Sep Analog Monitor: whole-drive signal analysis — Builds an offline Python monitor that aligns 100 Hz autonomy commands with 500 Hz analog CANlogger samples, stores the signals in purpose-built data structures, and visualizes whole-drive logs with Matplotlib.
2018 · Sep CANlogger retrofit across the Renault Zoe fleet — Scales the analog-signal setup from one Renault Zoe to several vehicles: probes steering, brake, and accelerator signals, configures the CAN messages, and verifies the higher-rate samples used for takeover analysis and fault diagnosis.
2018 · Sep GPS Plotter + plot_coordinate utility — Refactors Analog Monitor into a trajectory comparator for Ublox, Trimble, and fused LIDAR/IMU localization, exporting KML for Google Earth. A separate Python utility plots 32,012 stored pose-coordinate pairs as a 2D path.
2018 · Sep Blinker circuit for a weather-resistant vehicle lamp — Designs and iterates a capacitor-and-MOSFET switching circuit in Fritzing so a water-resistant replacement lamp can blink on the Renault Zoe test vehicles; the breadboard prototype reaches stable operation.
2018 · 5-17 Sep PC Monitor: standalone Linux health telemetry — Builds a C++ and Boost utility, independent of nuCore, that reports per-core CPU load, temperatures, memory and virtual-memory usage, GPU status, disks and partitions, network interfaces, hostname, and uptime from Linux system files and calls.
2018 · Dec Bench-testing a replacement in-car Linux PC — Stress-tests a 48-core replacement computer, then replays recorded driving inputs through the containerized autonomy stack to check whether one machine can replace three, tracking CPU temperature and clock behavior under both loads.
2018 · Dec Camera-reader unit tests in C++ — Refactors JPEG and NV12 parsing into testable C++ functions, compares expected OpenCV matrices with GoogleTest, and connects the tests to CTest and Jenkins; the build passed.
2020 · Jan-Feb EE4414 machine-learning design coursework — Builds MATLAB exercises across neural-network regression, pattern classification, and a two-person face classifier, comparing multilayer neural networks with linear and radial-basis-function support-vector machines.