BackStartups
Portrait of William Tanuwijaya

William Tanuwijaya

Tokopedia (GoTo Group)

Indonesia’s largest e-commerce marketplace, merged with Gojek to form GoTo · Jakarta, Indonesia

Portrait: Priscilla anais / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

$1.1B raised
IPO on the Indonesia Stock Exchange
2022
IPO
Asia-Pacific
Regional desk

The founder

William Tanuwijaya studied at Binus University in Jakarta while working night shifts at an internet café to support his family — he has described himself as "a graduate from internet café." He co-founded Tokopedia with Leontinus Alpha Edison in February 2009 to open up e-commerce for small Indonesian merchants, growing it into the country’s dominant online marketplace and one of Southeast Asia’s earliest unicorns.

How it was taken public

In May 2021, Tokopedia merged with ride-hailing and payments giant Gojek to form GoTo Group, Indonesia’s largest tech conglomerate. The combined company listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange on April 11, 2022, raising roughly $1.1 billion at an IPO-implied market cap near $28 billion — the largest IPO in Indonesian history. Tanuwijaya remained CEO of the Tokopedia unit through the listing before stepping down from GoTo’s board in 2024.