Profile: Traveloka’s Hendrik Susanto

After more than a decade-and-a-half of ups and downs in private equity, Hendrik Susanto was taking a long-awaited rest. Ancora Capital Management, where he had served for nearly seven years – the last two as CEO – had deployed its second fund, and Susanto wanted to focus on his family. The sabbatical was interrupted by a breakfast invitation from Ferry Unardi, co-founder of Indonesian online travel agency (OTA) Traveloka. It led to a series of meetings that soon set Susanto on a whole new course.

“We had four or five meals overall, and by the fifth we had a handshake and he offered to let me lead all the external, inorganic growth of the company,” Susanto recalls. “To me it was an incredible opportunity to join this rocket ship of a company while at the same time being able to contribute to its growth by utilizing my background in venture capital and private equity.”

By September 2017 Susanto had joined Traveloka as its CIO. In some respects, the role is a long way from where he started. In others, it represents a return to his roots and the dream of making an impact that prompted him to leave Indonesia in the first place.

A career in finance was never in Susanto’s mind while planning his educational path after leaving high school. He was eager to study something practical, with real-world applications – but also yearned to open his mind and look beyond the limited horizons available at home.

“It was really a different world in Indonesia in the 1980s,” Susanto says. “The subjects that were more interesting, that allowed you to think, were the sciences, math, and physics, and you had to specialize in high school. I had a pretty diverse set of interests beyond the constraints of the high school science curriculum, so when it came time to go to college, I chose to go to Princeton. It’s a liberal arts school, but it’s also got strengths in all the quantitative disciplines.”

Affinity for finance

Though he was planning to study engineering, attending a university with such a wide range of subjects seemed a good way to keep his options open. This proved a smart move, as while earning his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and engineering management systems Susanto became increasingly interested in the world of investment; he even found time to help with the campus finance organization.

The attraction was so strong that upon graduation, moved to New York City to join Goldman Sachs as an analyst. After three years focusing on real estate, he seized an opportunity to move into investing after when a position opened up in Goldman’s private equity division. The bank was expanding in Southeast Asia, and Susanto joined the Singapore office to pursue deals in his home country.

Real estate still occupied around half of his time with Goldman in Singapore, at least at first. But now Susanto was also able to devote a significant amount of effort to the type of corporate investments that interested him most, with Goldman concentrating on telecommunications and media in Indonesia. The work turned out to be exactly the kind of challenge he needed.

“It really combines everything I like – there’s the analytical, quantitative aspect of it; there’s learning about the business model and studying the competitive landscape; and there’s the interpersonal aspect of establishing relationships with the entrepreneurs and management teams,” says Susanto.

By 1998, with private equity looking more and more like a permanent career choice, Susanto decided the time had come to refresh his skills, and he returned to the US to get his MBA at Wharton. While there he would serve as president of the campus private equity club, revamping and improving the annual conference.

The time at Wharton also provided a chance to reflect on his experience and plan his next moves. Investing had proved stimulating, but the deals Susanto worked on at Goldman hadn’t put his engineering and technology training to much use. Rather than return to Singapore for more of the same, Susanto headed to California. The internet revolution had already crested, but there still seemed to be plenty of opportunities for an investor who could help companies reach the next level. He joined the small team at IDG Ventures in 2000.

“Because it was such a small organization, I was involved in everything from deal sourcing, to negotiation, to closing the deal and getting involved on the board, as well as LP reporting and board meetings with investors,” Susanto says. “It was a full cycle exposure, and really an apprenticeship in venture capital.”

Susanto spent more than four years at IDG, but the second half of his stint was complicated by the fallout from the 9/11 attacks. The economic downturn that followed provided some valuable lessons in portfolio triage, but by 2004 the time seemed right to move on.

Marriage brought Susanto back to the east coast in 2005, and he joined New York-based GTI Group as a principal, investing in venture capital, growth equity, and small-cap buyout opportunities globally. While he stayed busy in the US, he had an eye on his home country as well, where the private equity community was changing rapidly.

Susanto was not the only Indonesian investment professional who had found a spark with Goldman. Several other alumni had launched their own investment houses by 2008, such as Northstar Group. Watching from afar, Susanto was impressed by the apparent growth in appetite for Indonesian private equity and resolved to return to the region so he could put his experience to work as well.

Initially he reached out to Kim Chan, an ex-Goldman colleague based in Hong Kong who had founded Argyle Street Management in 2002, to launch an Indonesia-focused fund. However, the global financial crisis put a stop to those plans. Back at square one, Susanto decided to follow up on an earlier offer and join Ancora.

Back home

Ancora was in the middle of its own transition in 2010. Several senior investment team members had departed to form Kerogen Capital and then Gita Wirjawan – the firm’s founder and another acquaintance of Susanto’s from his time at Goldman in Singapore – was appointed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s cabinet. Ancora was in the middle of monetizing its first fund and needed an experienced hand at the wheel as it moved forward. 

“It was another entrepreneurial experience, because we had to raise the second fund from scratch, and I also had to build a team and source transactions in Indonesia,” Susanto says. 

New hires included Ming Maa, would have a notable impact on Susanto’s career. While better known today as president of ride-hailing app Grab, at the time Maa was yet another Goldman veteran, having most recently worked in the merchant banking division. His passion for technology entrepreneurs impressed Susanto, though there seemed to be little opportunity to act on this interest at the time.

“While Ming was with us at Ancora he started talking to a lot of the local internet start-ups, some of which became really big,” says Susanto. “But in terms of investment area it was outside the mandate of the Ancora fund, so while we started following technology on the sidelines, I still spent most of my time working on more traditional private equity investments.”

Traveloka had yet to attain unicorn status while Susanto was at Ancora, but he met Unardi in 2013 when the company was transforming from an aggregator into an OTA and witnessed the entrepreneurial drive that had gained the company significant backing. They renewed their acquaintance in 2017 while Expedia was finalizing a $350 million funding round for Traveloka, and the company was preparing a regional growth plan of which investment was a key part.

As CIO, Susanto was given the chance to bring his decades of experience to a company that was still staffed by predominantly young people. He believed that a seasoned professional like him could provide generational balance to the team while guiding it to greater heights.

“Traveloka’s got a terrific brand name that allows us access to a wide range of potential investees and partners,” Susanto says. “But at the end of the day, it is still a highly competitive industry, so the experience of having worked on deals across the spectrum of venture capital and private equity lent me additional credibility personally and as a board member at these investee companies.”

Investing on behalf of a corporate has also required Susanto to change his assumptions. His previous employers pursued deals with an eye to a fixed time horizon and return target, and according to a specific strategy. In contrast, Traveloka’s investments primarily serve the company by enabling entry into new markets or new verticals; they might be Series A rounds or buyouts. 

For Susanto, one of the greatest benefits of joining Traveloka has been getting to see how a unicorn operates from the inside out and how the founders and their team respond to each new challenge. The experience is one that he encourages his fellow investors to seriously consider if the opportunity arises. 

“Doing this can make you a better investor because you are really understanding how the company operates,” Susanto says. “It’s not just from the financial analysis perspective of what you see on PowerPoint slides and in board meetings – you get to work alongside them, be in a front row seat, and help to make decisions that affect where the company goes at an operational level.”   

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Consumer
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• Singapore
• Indonesia
• Venture