William Tanuwijaya

People Living

ويليام تانوويجايا

William Tanuwijaya (born 11 November 1981 in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra) is an Indonesian entrepreneur, co-founder of the e-commerce company Tokopedia, launched in 2009; he worked twelve-hour nights in an internet cafe to pay his way through BINUS University after his father was diagnosed with cancer, led Tokopedia as chairman and CEO and then as co-chairman of the GoTo group after the 2021 merger, received the Satyalancana Wira Karya in 2019, and has represented Indonesia as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.

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At a glance

Roles
businessman
Region
Southeast Asia
Identifiers
Wikidata
Review

Life in time

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Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    Summary

    William Tanuwijaya (born 11 November 1981) is an Indonesian entrepreneur, the co-founder of Tokopedia, an Indonesian technology company with a leading e-commerce business; he represents Indonesia as a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, and in 2019 received the Satyalancana Wira Karya medal from the President of the Republic of Indonesia for his contribution to Indonesia's technology and economic growth 1 2.

    Life

    Tanuwijaya was born in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra, on 11 November 1981, into a middle-income family whose father was an ordinary worker, and spent his childhood and teens in the city 1 2 3. After high school he moved to Jakarta and studied at BINUS University; when his father was diagnosed with cancer in his second year he became the family's breadwinner, working twelve-hour night shifts as an internet-cafe operator for about three years until graduating in 2003 2 1. He then worked as a game and software developer at companies including Telkomsigma and Sqiva Sistem, and as IT and business development manager at Indocom Mediatama from 2006, and later took executive education at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2017 1 2. He married Felicia HW in November 2015 2.

    Work

    Tanuwijaya began building Tokopedia in 2007 and asked his friend Leontinus Alpha Edison to join him as co-founder; after two years of repeated rejections from traditional investors, seed funding came from his former employer, and Tokopedia officially launched on 6 February 2009, opening to the public on 17 August that year 1 2. The company received US$100 million from SoftBank and Sequoia Capital in October 2014 and a $1.1 billion investment led by Alibaba Group in August 2017 1. He led Tokopedia as CEO until early 2023, then served as commissioner and co-chairman of the merged GoTo group until mid-2024 2. He is one of the founders of the Indonesia eCommerce Association (idEA) and sits on its supervisory board 1. No text read for this record names a faith for Tanuwijaya himself — the articles are silent and Wikidata carries no religion statement for him — so his faith is recorded as unknown 1 2 3.

    Sources

    Career

    These posts have no recorded dates, so they are listed here in words.

    Sources

    1. William Tanuwijaya — English Wikipedia
    2. William Tanuwijaya — Indonesian Wikipedia
    3. William Tanuwijaya (Q25469065) — Wikidata
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “William Tanuwijaya”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/william-tanuwijaya/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-01.

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