Asia-Pacific Power List 2020: Kevin Mintaraga, Tokopedia

Kevin Mintaraga

Vice president
Tokopedia
Indonesia

Tokopedia’s rapid rise to being one of Indonesia’s leading e-commerce retail platforms has been something of a capitalist dream for the founding team. After hundreds of millions in initial funding, corporate giants including SoftBank, Temasek and Alibaba have channeled funds into the company, resulting in an approximate current valuation of US$7 billion. It now joins Indonesian startup titans Gojek, Traveloka and Bukalapak in achieving ‘unicorn’ status.

Kevin Mintaraga, who oversees all marketing and advertising solutions at Tokopedia, has plenty to carry on his shoulders. The young marketer’s path began with Bridestory, a wedding marketplace that he founded, which was eventually acquired by Tokopedia. He was then redeployed to handle Tokopedia’s overall marketing efforts. 

One of the greatest challenges Mintaraga and his team faced in the past year was attracting young, female consumers. So he led a deal with only the world’s most popular boyband. Yes, Tokopedia signed an exclusive contract with K-pop sensation BTS as its brand ambassador, swiftly winning over the targeted demographic onto the platform. 

Last year, when the brand celebrated its 10th anniversary, Mintaraga and his team further strengthened Tokopedia’s purpose to democratise commerce through tech via its #KamiBaruMulai campaign. Literally translating to “we are just getting started”, the campaign boldly blocked all national TV stations at the same time for an hour and presented a show that told the stories of Indonesian figures featuring a segment filled by President Joko Widodo. An improvement in brand perception followed, plus a surge in workplace morale for employees.

And during the pandemic, a campaign called #JagaEkonomiIndonesia was launched to communicate core messages to buyers and sellers. In hopes to continue championing the brand purpose, Mintaraga's team ran TVCs and other marcomms efforts to motivate sellers and buyers. A lesson in using the spirit of community to band consumers together during a crisis.

Mintaraga can be found on Twitter at: @kvmin